Trace anesthetic effect on perceptual, cognitive and motor skills.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Arbit J ; Bach, Mary J. ; Bruce, David L.
• Description:
  Twenty male, paid volunteer medical or dental students were exposed on two occasions to four hours of inhalation of either air or 500ppm nitrous-oxide (10024972) and 15ppm halothane (151677) in air. Immediately following this, a battery of tests of perceptual, cognitive and motor skills were administered to them. Evaluating their responses compared to their control conditions when they breathed only air, there was a significant decrement in performance following anesthetic exposure on a task of divided attention between auditory and visual signals, a visual tachistoscopic test, and memory tests involving digit span and recall of word pairs. These findings may indicate a subtle but significant negative effect on the ability of anesthesiologists to provide vigilant care for their patients. Further investigation of possible long term effects upon the effective function and accident record of the anesthetist is indicated. (Contract No. 099-72-0048) [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Content Notes:
  in NTRL, no PDF
• Subjects:
  Anesthesia Consciousness Enflurane Health Personnel Mental Health Nervous System Nitrogen Oxides Occupational Health Safety Sense Organs Toxicology

  More +
• Keywords:
  NIOSH-Contract; Contract-099-72-0048; Medical-personnel; Nitrogen-oxides; Mental-processes; Fluorinated-ethanes; Sensory-perceptual-processes; Psychological-tests; Task-performance; Psychological-factors; Anesthetic; Toxicology; Testing; Psychophysiology; Physicians; Alertness; Conciousness
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Contract
• Genre:
  Report
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-16
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:00068888
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB82151325
• Citation:
  NIOSH 1973 Jul; :1-16
• CAS Registry Number:
  (±)-Halothane (CAS RN 151-67-7) ; Nitrous oxide (CAS RN 10024-97-2)
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1973
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Departments of Anesthesia and Psychiatry, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, NIOSH Contract No. 099-72-0048, Terminal Report, 16 pages, 4 references
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:7dc847c09aedf140bc731323e8446b4703641ae07d6ad9e7b7238120dab30b8f7dcaa9b938d34d035f87873a0fe7fec262d5d13dcaf290925445e82b6de3b57d
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/242026/cdc_242026_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 168.02 KB ]