Carter M
Nurs Times. 1989;85(4):40-2.
It has been known for a long time that mental impairment may occur in elderly patients following surgery and this has been attributed to anaesthesia. However, until recently, little systematic research has been carried out in this area. One problem has been that many factors apart from anaesthesia influence the mental function of elderly surgical patients. This paper describes a study in progress which is attempting to isolate the effects of anaesthesia per se on mental function, and identify which aspect of anaesthesia may be responsible. Results from the study indicate that advanced age itself does not predispose to marked postoperative impairment of reaction time, but they do support the idea that patients with some pre-operative mental impairment may be vulnerable to effects of anaesthesia. Thus it appears that the biological age of the brain rather than its chronological age may influence vulnerability to anaesthesia.
长期以来，人们都知道老年患者术后可能会出现精神障碍，这一直被归因于麻醉。然而，直到最近，这一领域才开展了很少的系统性研究。一个问题是，除了麻醉之外，许多因素都会影响老年外科患者的心理功能。本文描述了一项正在进行的研究，该研究试图分离麻醉本身对心理功能的影响，并确定麻醉的哪个方面可能对此负责。该研究的结果表明，高龄本身并不会导致术后反应时间明显受损，但这些结果确实支持了这样一种观点，即一些术前有精神障碍的患者可能易受麻醉影响。因此，似乎大脑的生物学年龄而非实际年龄可能会影响对麻醉的易感性。
