Stuttering after Intravenous Anesthesia: A Case Report

Stuttering is a form of speech disorder characterized by involuntary prolongation and repetition of sound, words, syllables or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks. We report a case of a healthy twenty-six-year-old male patient without significant past history, who underwent short intravenous anesthesia for incision and drainage for perianal abscess. Postoperatively, the patient presented with prominent stuttering after six hours of surgery. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of stuttering following short intravenous anesthesia without any airway manipulation. He was diagnosed with a functional speech disorder after excluding organic causes. His speech eventually normalized with six weeks of intensive speech therapy. This event posed a significant challenge for the surgical and anesthesia team to find the potential cause, to plan further management, and lead to two days prolongation of hospital stay.