A Conversation With Emery N. Brown: Call It a Reversible Coma, Not Sleep: Dr. Emery Neal Brown heads a laboratory seeking to unravel one of medicine’s big questions: how anesthesia works.
Dr. Emery Neal Brown, 54, is a professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, a professor of computational neuroscience at M.I.T. and a practicing physician, seeing patients at Massachusetts General Hospital. Between all that, he heads a laboratory seeking to unravel one of medicine’s big questions: how anesthesia works. Q. Some years ago when I had an operation, I remember the anesthesiologist trying to soothe me by saying that she was going to put me “to sleep.” Was this right?
A. No. And I wish we’d refrain from saying that to patients. It’s inaccurate. It would be better if we explained exactly what the state of general anesthesia is and why it’s needed. Patients appreciate this intellectual honesty. Moreover, anesthesiologists should never say “put you to sleep” because it is exactly the expression used when speaking about euthanizing an animal! Q. Why would someone like Michael Jackson take the anesthetic Propofol for insomnia?
A. I can only conjecture. But that incident is another reason why I think we need to be more precise describing what we do. If an anesthesiologist says, “We’re going to have you go to sleep,” some might think you could use these drugs for sleep. The bottom line is that when you’re undergoing anesthesia, you’re in a state akin to a coma. That always needs to be remembered.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 1, 2011, on page D2 of the New York edition.
