• Jean-Philippe Salaün, Grégoire Borst, Arnaud Cachia, François Orliac, Denis Vivien, and Nicolas Poirel.
• Normandie Université, UNICAEN, Université Caen Normandie, INSERM, GIP CYCERON, Institut Blood and Brain @Caen-Normandie (BB@C), UMR-S U1237, Physiopathology and Imaging of Neurological Disorders (PhIND), Caen, France; Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Caen Normandie, 14000 Caen, France. Electronic address: salaunjeanphilippe@gmail.com.
• Br J Anaesth. 2024 Aug 1; 133 (2): 344350344-350.

BackgroundPreclinical studies suggest that early exposure to anaesthesia alters the visual system in mice and non-human primates. We investigated whether exposure to general anaesthesia leads to visual attention processing changes in children, which could potentially impact essential life skills, including learning.MethodsThis was a post hoc analysis of data from the APprentissages EXécutifs et cerveau chez les enfants d'âge scolaire (APEX) cohort study. A total of 24 healthy 9-10-yr-old children who were or were not exposed to general anaesthesia (for surgery) by a mean age of 3.8 (2.6) yr performed a visual attention task to evaluate ability to process either local details or general global visual information. Whether children were distracted by visual interference during global and local information processing was also assessed.ResultsParticipants included in the analyses (n=12 participants exposed to general anaesthesia and n=12 controls) successfully completed (>90% of correct answers) the trial tasks. Children from both groups were equally distracted by visual interference. However, children who had been exposed to general anaesthesia were more attracted to global visual information than were control children (P=0.03).ConclusionsThese findings suggest lasting effects of early-life exposure to general anaesthesia on visuospatial abilities. Further investigations of the mechanisms by which general anaesthesia could have delayed effects on how children perceive their visual environment are needed.Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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