Effects of anesthesia on linguistic skills.

Abstract

To the Editor: We read with interest the letter to the editor from Akpek et al. (1) concerning the effects of anesthesia on linguistic skills. This has been an area of clinical interest to us in both adults and children. We have loaded recordings of phrases in foreign languages for our non-English speaking patients onto PCs as .MP3 files, and then played them back at emergence from anesthesia. Using this technique, we have been able to better assess our patients’ readiness for extubation, neurologic function, and level of pain. We have demonstrated that our bilingual patients respond better to commands in their native language at emergence (2,3). We have also awakened pediatric patients with a “virtual” parent (recordings of parents on files) at emergence in both English and non-English speaking children (4). Why patients revert to their native language upon emergence from anesthesia and the mechanism involved are not known. However, optimizing anesthetic management at emergence requires that we acknowledge this reversion to a patient’s primary language and work to improve the level of communication between anesthesiologist and patient during this critical period. Yvon Bryan, MD David Glick, MD