ECONOMICS, EDUCATION, AND HEALTH SYSTEMS RESEARCH SECTION EDITOR

Awareness with recall after general anesthesia is an in-frequent, but well described, phenomenon that may re-sult in posttraumatic stress disorder. There are no re-cent data on the incidence of this complication in the United States. We, therefore, undertook a prospective study to determine the incidence of awareness with re-call during general anesthesia in the United States. This is a prospective, nonrandomized descriptive cohort study that was conducted at seven academic medical centers in the United States. Patients scheduled for sur-gery under general anesthesia were interviewed in the postoperative recovery room and at least a week after anesthesia and surgery by using a structured interview. Data from 19,575 patients are presented. A total of 25 awareness cases were identified (0.13 % incidence)