B-AWARE Morbidity and Mortality Study

Awareness is an uncommon complication of anaesthesia, affecting 0.1-0.2% of all surgical patients. Bispectral index (BIS) monitoring measures the depth of anaesthesia and facilitates anaesthetic titration. This prospective, randomised, double-blind , multi-centre trial determined whether BIS-guided anaesthesia reduced the incidence of awareness during surgery in high-risk adult patients. The study concluded that BIS-guided anaesthesia reduced awareness in at-risk adult surgical patients undergoing relaxant general anaesthesia, and showed clinically modest effects on recovery times.