I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about something my mother told me this morning. The hospital where she works as a mother/baby nurse is in an uproar right now. Apparently a kid died in surgery the other day. I’m not sure how old, but he was under a year, and his parents had brought him in to be circumsized. They don’t know what happened officially, but Mom says that from what she’s heard it sounds like the anesthesiologist over anesthitized the baby and caused a respitory arrest. Then the doctors tried to restart the kid breathing by using methods ment for adults. Apparently none of the people in the room at the time were PALS certified. PALS stands for Pediatric Advanced Life Support and basically means that a person certified in PALS knows what specifically to do when a child codes. Pediatric medicine is a whole different world than adult medicine and procedures used on adults can result in death if applied to infants and children.
PALS certification isn’t required for all medical personel, and apparently not even for all personel that might have to work on kids.
Parents, if you are ever in the unfortunate position needing surgery for a child, please ask. Ask your pediatrician, ask your surgen, ask to speak to the anesthesiologist, ask if they are PALS cerified. Ask about their experience with children and pediatric medicine. This kid was in for a circumsision! There was nothing wrong with him. My heart is breaking for the parents. Their baby died because of elective surgery. Cosmetic elective surgery.
Children are anesthitized with general now for a circumsision? Back when my brother (19yrs) was a baby they didn’t use anything at all, so my mother- who had assisted with the procedure around that time- wouldn’t have it done.
No, according to my mother, who would know, they don’t normally use general anesthesia for circumsision. They use a local of some sort, I can remember what she called it exactly. These guys messed up bad.
You’d think. When my mom took the job at this hospital, there wasn’t even a PALS program in the area. As she was a certified PALS instructor and wanted to stay that way, she started a program.
My kid went cold-turkey. I can’t imagine what they were thinking to put this baby under for that procedure! They must have thought he was someone else. Very sad.
Putting a baby under is a very delicate procedure and I have never, ever heard of this being done for a circumcision. Does she mean they just over injected him with a local and he had a reaction?
Mom said that they used general. I have no reason to doubt her. Though she said that she has no idea why they would do this. He may have had a reaction to the anesthesia, they’re still investigating it.
Thank you for the link astro. Though this kid was not a neonate. Either there was some reason he couldn’t be circumsised at birth or his parents wanted to think on it a bit and decided later that they did indeed want to have their son snipped.
Either way, there is no reason whatsoever for a general anesthetic during a routine circumcision. Hell, there’s not really a need for a local, with a newborn. One of my sons fell asleep during it!
I agree that parents should be extremely well-educated when it comes to the medical care of their children. If you don’t understand what’s happening, STOP THEM.
I keep forgetting to add stuff to my posts, sorry!
There is a certain condition which precludes neonatal circumcision. There is a slight deformity of the end of the penis, and they wait a while to use some of the foreskin to fix it. Happened to my husband when he was a baby, and IIRC it was quite a while before he was circumcised.
But that wouldn’t be considered a circumcision, would it? It would be a different surgery.
Yeah, that sounds different, as you’d be using the forskin for something rather than just removing it.
I agree. I was just responding as a parent. For some reason I’m having a hard time separating myself from this. Last night I couldn’t sleep because I was feeling so guilty that this had happened. I don’t even know the parents, but their suffering is weighing hard on me.
My son was circ’d when he was 6 months old. He was given full anesthesia for the procedure.
For various reasons, he missed the window of opportunity when he was born, and we had to go back later to have it done.
The pediatric urologist waited till he was six months old so he could tolerate full anesthesia. It was done as an outpatient surgery at the hospital, and there were large signs all over the place about PAL certification.
BTW, my son is now 14 months old, we had the circ done last June.
So I guess what I’m trying to express here is that yes, some kids get done when they are older, and some when they are MUCH older. When we were in there, the nurse mentioned a 6 yr old boy that had been in the previous day to be circ’d. :eek:
I wonder if it really was general anesthesia? FWIW, I understand that the most commonly-used local anesthesia is lidocaine with epinepherine. The standard concentration of epinephrine can produce a fatal reaction in children very bottom of the page. My wife is a foot surgeon, and on occasion she has been given lidocaine w/epi when she requested “straight” lidocaine. Not saying that his is necessarily what happened here, just throwing out an alternative hypothesis.