Anesthesia dreaming

Mare Lucas felt euphoric. From high above, she saw herself giving birth to her oldest son, Zane, who had died by suicide in 2017 at age 18. His birth had been difficult, and his death brought Lucas lasting trauma — but now all she felt was overwhelming love and joy.

Then Lucas heard a voice over her right shoulder. “Hello Mare, can you hear my voice? Are you having happy dreams?” asked her anesthesiologist, Harrison Chow, MD. She was.

Chow adjusted the infusion of propofol, a common sedative used in surgical anesthesia, and carefully monitored her brain waves as Lucas fell back into her dream. Chow had become adept at tuning propofol to gently awaken patients from surgery, which eased their recovery. He’d also noticed that at a particular level of consciousness, patients often had pleasant dreams.

It was August 2022 and Lucas was undergoing routine surgery to remove a lump in her right breast.

She’d previously been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and still had terrifying nightmares about Zane’s suicide. But the morning after the surgery, she awoke feeling a surprising sense of calm. Her anxiety felt manageable. And she vividly remembered the dreams she experienced while under anesthesia.

“There was something about the euphoria that came with this dream that somehow knocked my brain out of those trauma connections,” Lucas said.
Chow and colleagues published a report in March in The American Journal of Psychiatry about two patients, including Lucas, whose trauma symptoms improved after anesthetic-induced dreaming during surgery.

The researchers suggested these dreams may work as an accelerated form of exposure therapy, allowing patients to process traumatic memories with a calm body and mind. They hope to develop the protocol into a therapy for psychiatric conditions.

“These cases are a profound demonstration that experience matters,” said Boris Heifets, MD, PhD, assistant professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine and co-senior author of the report with Chow. “And we have a unique way to deliver a transformative experience in a very safe manner.”

Photo by CravenA/Adobe Stock Images

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