Assessment of Intraoperative Awareness with Explicit Recall

Abstract

Superiority of the modified Brice interview over quality assurance techniques in detecting intraoperative awareness with explicit recall has not been demonstrated definitively. We studied a single patient cohort to compare the detection of definite awareness using a single modified Brice interview (postoperative day 28-30) versus quality assurance data (postoperative day 1). The incidence of awareness based on the modified Brice interview was 19 per 18,847 or 0.1%. Fewer awareness cases (incidence 0.02%) were detected by the quality assurance approach (P < 0.0001). The modified Brice interview is the preferred modality for assessing intraoperative awareness with explicit recall.