Do people with bipolar disorder have hallucinations after having general anesthesia?
I am diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I am having my wisdom teeth taken out next week and they will have to put me to sleep and I heard that bipolar people have hallucinations after having general anesthesia. Is this true? If your bipolar and have had similar experiences, what was it like?
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I’ve had two general anesthesias in the middle of a really manic period and never had any hallucinations.
I have never heard of this happening.
I’ve never been diagnosed as BP but after having some female surgery along with blood transfusion the next day I started having audio halucinations.Pretty scary for me..
It lasted only 24 hours 36 hours after the surgery.
Sounds like you better check with an MD.
It is not just bipolar. It is normal to have post operative dementia. You will barely remember it and the staff won’t pay you any mind because they deal with people acting strangely all the time.
Unless someone already has dementia or is developing it, then hallucinations due to general anesthesia are not common. More common are reactions to narcotic pain medications, which can include confusion/hallucinations.
The only other factor would be your bipolar medications. I can’t think of any off-hand that would interact with anesthetics to cause hallucinations, but I am not up-to-date with all the medications. I would expect that it would be *withdrawal* from missing medication doses that would be more likely to cause problems. So, I would ask your psychiatrist if you should/could skip any of your medications on the day of your procedure. Take into consideration the time of your surgery, the length of your surgery and whether you need to take food with your medications. You cannot have anything to eat or drink 8 hours before receiving anesthesia (except you may have water up to 2 hours before anesthesia). Most anesthesiologists will allow you to have medications with a sip of water up to 1 hour before. Afterwards, give yourself at least an hour or so before you can take any medications. Longer if you need to take it with food. From the anesthesiologist’s perspective, keeping the patient on their regular doses of medication is usually preferred – unless those medications are known to interact with anesthetics.
I hope this is helpful. I believe you can contact me if you have further questions.