Lovely article Maggie, well-informed and well written.
I’m an anaesthetist in the UK (Hence the correct spelling!). One of the issues that you didn’t really touch upon is that of paralysis- for many operations to work, the patient needs to be given a muscle relaxants which makes all voluntary movement impossible. This is necessary sometimes, but it makes the anaesthetist’s “awareness of awareness” all the more difficult - it can be impossible to know that the patient has become aware.
The future’s bright, but for the time being, the instruments we use are pretty blunt!
