Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appears to occur more frequently in children who undergo surgical procedures requiring anesthesia while they are infants, according to new research.
In the study published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and Children’s Hospital in Boston examined the data of 5,357 children born between 1976 and 1982. Children who underwent at least two procedures involving anesthesia before their second birthday were about twice as likely to develop ADHD later in life, the authors said.
Children exposed to anesthesia only once were at no greater risk of developing ADHD. 7.3 percent of infants who had not had any surgeries went on to develop ADHD, while 10.7 percent who underwent one surgery did. The researchers called this difference statistically negligible.
However, the infants who had been exposed to anesthesia two or more times had a markedly higher risk of developing ADHD: 17.9 percent.
Study author David O. Warner, M.D., a pediatric anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic, emphasized the need for additional research.
"We need to do more work to confirm whether this is really a problem in children or not," he said, as quoted by ABC News. "We can't exclude there is a problem, but we also haven't determined there is a problem."
It is atypical for an infant to have two or more surgeries before the age of two, so it could be that the more ADHD-prone infants had pre-existing medical conditions that led to the development of the disorder later on, the researchers noted.
