Anesthesia safe for kids

The Lancet: General anesthesia is unlikely to have lasting effects on the developing brains of young children

One brief general anesthetic in early infancy is unlikely to be harmful to long-term neurodevelopment, but the safety of longer and repeated exposures remains unclear.

"...The trial provides the strongest evidence to date that one brief exposure to anesthesia is safe in young children.

"...The study is the first randomized trial to investigate whether exposure to general anesthesia in infancy (aged 60 weeks of postmenstrual age or younger)...

"...For over a decade, the potential neurotoxicity of commonly used anesthetic drugs in children has been debated. In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration warned that prolonged or repeated anesthesia in children younger than 3 years of age might affect brain development. However, this warning was based largely on animal studies which showed increased cell death in developing animals. 

"...722 children undergoing surgical repair of inguinal hernia...randomly assigned to general anesthesia (363 children) or awake-regional (local) anesthesia (which does not cause brain injury in animal models; 359 children)...average duration of general anesthesia was 54 minutes.

"...researchers report the final results of the GAS trial at 5 years of age--a time when intelligence testing is strongly predictive of future achievement. 

"...Due to deviations from the treatment protocol (some children in the awake-regional group also had to be given a general anesthetic) and loss to follow up, only 205 of 363 children in the awake-regional group and 242 of 359 children in the general anesthesia group were included in the final analysis...Results showed no significant difference in IQ scores between the children exposed to general anesthesia (average IQ score 98.87) and awake-regional anesthesia (99.08), after adjusting for age at birth and country, and accounting missing data.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/tl-pss021319.php