Local doctors are using a remarkable device that can help patients overcome one of their biggest fears: waking up in the middle of surgery and feeling pain.

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News Health Reporter Micki Flowers describes the new tool that offers reassurance.

It happens only rarely, but general anesthesia can fail to knock out surgical patients.

Causing pain and sheer terror for a few, others say they remember whole conversations while under the knife.

Now doctors have a device that helps them make sure patients get the right amount of anesthesia.

Kate Adamson has vivid disturbing memories of being awake during surgery.

"I didn't know when it was going to be over, so I could only endure and survive, and pray that I would somehow get through it," said Adamson.

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This medical device may dramatically reduce the risk of a patient waking up. It's called a BIS monitor, a computer that helps doctors track the affects of anesthesia on brainwaves.

University of Washington Anesthesiologist Dr. Andy Bowdle says he uses it in all his surgeries. Preliminary studies show it has promise.

"In comparing the incidence of awareness in the group that didn't have BIS monitoring to the group that did have BIS monitoring, there was an 80 percent reduction in the incidence of awareness," said Bowdle.

He helped conduct a nationwide study that revealed awareness during surgery is a rare but real occurrence. It affects one in a thousand patients.

Those who undergo trauma surgery, C-sections and heart surgery have the highest risk.

But luckily not all feel pain.

"It is the distinct minority of those patients who have very graphic disturbing experiences," said Bowdle.

But he's hoping the BIS monitor can reassure future surgery patients that they won't go through what Kate Adamson had to endure.

The BIS monitor works for many, but not all types of surgery. It can also help doctors make sure you won't get too much anesthesia and that can help you recover faster.