Why did this thriller with Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba shock the medical profession?

In the early 2000s, American actor Hayden Christensen was at the peak of his career. He is the face of the new Star Wars trilogy and has had a series of projects…but without much success.

In 2007, he starred in Awake, a paranoid thriller in which he played Clay, a wealthy New York heir. When he urgently needs a heart transplant, he finds himself at the center of a plot to kill him so he can get his money back…

Clay then undergoes an intraoperative arousal on the operating table, which is described as being in a state of consciousness under general anesthesia. He can’t move, but he can see everything that happens around him…

A waking nightmare

If Awake is a work of art, and the reviews were devastating when it was released in theaters (in fact, it was released straight to DVD here), the film particularly drew the ire of the medical profession, torn over the issue of intraoperative awareness.

In case you’re wondering: yes, it exists. But does it really work in 1 in 700 cases as this movie suggests?

Many doctors expressed their displeasure in the press, Like Dr. Stephen Brown, at the time chief of general anesthesia in New York. The latter pointed out the sensational side of the film (and Hollywood in general) and wanted to calm things down.

According to him, there will be 1 case in 1000 to 3000. “This is one of the things that can happen in the operating room. In the most common case, the patient wakes up briefly, he may hear part of a conversation or remember the music playing in the room after waking up.

If we are really talking about Clay’s case, it should affect 1 in 50,000 or even 100,000 patients, we are far from the numbers in the movie.

Disagreement on the topic

Data that doesn’t understand some Carol Weirer, president of the Intraoperative Awareness Foundation. For him, this event occurs much more regularly than this: 1 in 200 cases are recorded each year in the United States (if you do not count those that are not reported to doctors).

And the latter knows what he is talking about, because he had experience ten years ago:

“My eye needed an operation. I didn’t do narcosis, paralyzers. I could not move or communicate, but I was fully aware of everything that was happening. I was screaming in my head and thought I was going to die.”

Since then, Carol Weirer has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and has been trying to raise awareness about the issue. The theatrical release of Awake allowed many viewers to discover this phenomenon and discuss…

wake up Leaving the Prime Video catalog on March 15.