Does exposure to general anesthesia before age 3 yr reduce general intelligence or cause behavioral and learning difficulties in young children?
Exposure to general anesthesia before age 3 does not appear to impair general intelligence, but multiple exposures may be linked to specific neuropsychological and behavioral difficulties.
Anesthesia exposure before age 3 yr was not associated with deficits in the primary outcome of general intelligence. Although secondary outcomes must be interpreted cautiously, they suggest the hypothesis that multiple, but not single, exposures are associated with a pattern of changes in specific neuropsychological domains that is associated with behavioral and learning difficulties.
Warner et al. (2018) studied this question.
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