Pediatric anesthesia & critical care
Dreaming during anaesthesia: a scoping review
Authors' conclusion
Anaesthesia dreaming is common, predominantly positive, and pharmacologically specific.
Study context
- Population
- Adult and paediatric patients and healthy volunteers receiving anaesthesia (clinical trials, observational and experimental studies)
- Participants
- 87,866 participants · 157 studies
- Outcome
- Frequency, phenomenology, predictors, outcomes and neural correlates of anaesthesia dreaming
Methodological detailsStudies 1921-2024
- Studies 1921-2024
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Dream recall
- Dream recall in experimental settings
- often 40%-80%
- Dream recall in large-scale clinical trials
- typically 3%-8%
- Ketamine recall, clinical
- 0%-95%
- Ketamine recall, experimental
- 44%-100%
- Propofol recall, clinical
- 0%-64%
- Propofol recall, experimental
- 0%-77%
Further findings
Clinical outcomes
- Limited evidence; unpleasant dreams linked to lower willingness to undergo the same anaesthetic again
Intraoperative awareness
- Dream recall not associated with intraoperative awareness
Neural correlates
- Dreaming shows signatures distinct from unconsciousness and connected consciousness (emerging evidence)
Original publication
Dreaming during anaesthesia: a scoping review. Br J Anaesth. Published 11 June 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →