Consciousness monitoring — being able to tell whether your patient is truly unconscious and not simply paralyzed — has long been a holy grail for anesthesia providers. Aspect Medical Systems was the first to develop a monitor that gives clinically reliable results.

While Aspect had data all along showing that awareness with recall was highly improbable at BIS values below 60, they could not claim that the monitor prevents intraoperative awareness without a clinical trial, and in 2003 two trials were on the verge of publication.

The problem was that these trials were conducted outside the United States: one was from Sweden, the other from Australasia. Aspect anticipated that some American clinicians would discredit these results by believing first that intraoperative awareness does not occur in American practice and second that the studies did not reflect American practice.

Our assignment as filmmakers was to present the data — including data from a multi-center American study showing the same prevalence of intraoperative awareness found overseas — but also to demonstrate, very concretely, that Australians and Swedes use familiar equipment, familiar techniques and familiar agents. In other words, we needed to have film that says, “looks like an OR to me.”

The deadline was tight. We went around the world — 26,000 miles — in 13 days and brought back footage to validate these crucial studies by documenting the environment and the credibility of the key investigators.

The entire video is available on Aspect’s web site.