General Anesthesia Safe For Children On Ketogenic Diet Suffering From Epilepsy

Epileptic children have always been ostracized as children of a lesser God. The physical, mental, moral and social ramifications of these hapless children are beyond words. One stumbling handicap in the surgical treatment of such children was the feasibility of administering General Anesthesia to these children. In many cases the anesthesia times ranged from 1 to 10 hours with procedures ranging from central line placement to hemispherectomy. There is however light at the end of the tunnel for these patients, according to a report published at the American Epilepsy Society Annual Meeting at Los Angles, which was held on Monday. According to the report, with careful monitoring of electrolytes and PH, general anesthesia can be administered to children on a ketogenic diet.

A diet with high fat and low carbohydrates and proteins, causing ketosis is called a ketogenic diet. With very few reports published on the issue, Dr. Ignacio Valencia and his team at the Children’s Hospital in Boston spearheaded this research. The results they say are encouraging. While serum glucose levels remained stable in all patients throughout the procedure, most of the patients had a decrease in serum PH and bicarb levels. No increase in seizure frequency was observed in the perioperative period.