Assessment of intraoperative awareness with explicit recall: a comparison of 2 methods.

Abstract

Superiority of the modified Brice interview over quality assurance techniques in detecting intraoperative awareness with explicit recall has not been demonstrated definitively. We studied a single patient cohort to compare the detection of definite awareness using a single modified Brice interview (postoperative day 28-30) versus quality assurance data (postoperative day 1). The incidence of awareness based on the modified Brice interview was 19 per 18,847 or 0.1%. Fewer awareness cases (incidence 0.02%) were detected by the quality assurance approach (P < 0.0001). The modified Brice interview is the preferred modality for assessing intraoperative awareness with explicit recall.