Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Findings in Children With Early Exposure to General Anesthesia

Nationwide Children's Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Exposed to Anesthesia

Treatments: Other: fMRI

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01229514

IRB07-00456

Details and patient eligibility

About

General anesthetic medications have been shown to cause neuronal cell death in the brains of infant rodents. Ethanol and general anesthetics both act on NMDA and GABA receptors,and appear to have similar mechanisms of toxicity in the immature rodent brain. Functional MRI (fMRI) is a technique developed for mapping brain activation and has been utilized to examine how the brains of children with a history of early exposure to ethanol function differently from children without such a history. This study will utilize fMRI to look for specific changes in brain activation patterns in children with a history of early exposure to general anesthesia, as compared to children without such exposure.

Enrollment: 30 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 10 to 17 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Children ages 10-17 years with an history of exposure to general anesthesia for at least one hour in duration during the ages of 0-24 months of age.
2. The cognitive ability to complete fMRI imaging.
3. Consent of the subject's guardians and assent of the subject.
4. Right hand dominance.
5. English language speaker.

Exclusion criteria

1. Subjects with known possibility or knowledge of pregnancy.
2. Documentation of hemodynamic or respiratory instability documented on the anesthetic record
3. Subjects with the inability to complete MRI imaging without sedation.
4. History of prenatal ethanol exposure.
5. History of exposure to antiepileptic medication.
6. History of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
7. History of traumatic brain injury
8. History of psychiatric disease or exposure to psychoactive medications.
9. History of substance abuse.

Trial design

30 participants in 2 patient groups

Exposure to anesthesia

Treatment:

Other: fMRI

Normal controls

Treatment:

Other: fMRI