This is probably one of the most common questions that I encounter. By the time this question comes up, I have already discussed about the near negligible risks (but not zero) of surgery and anesthesia in children at least twice. The actual risk of death for healthy children undergoing anesthesia is of the order of 1:100000 children undergoing anesthesia. To define this in easily understood terms, the risk is less than half the risk of crossing a busy street. We merrily (or should I say with gay abandon!) cross streets 15-20 times a day at the very least, paying nary a thought to the very real possibility of an accident.
I think there are two reasons for this state of affairs. Firstly, crossing the street is a routine, mundane day to day affair and everybody understands that one needs to go across to the other side. But the key difference is that one is oneself in control whereas you are handing over the most precious person in your life in the hands of strangers. Secondly, I blame the media since it goes all over town whenever the rarest of rare anesthetic mishaps occurs. I agree that it is newsworthy but that is my point, it is so rare that it is blown out of all proportion whereas road accidents are oh so boring!. Nothing newsworthy there. I think the media can help by regularly hosting programs that highlight the safety of routine, elective surgery. Whenever an unfortunate event occurs, the coverage should be mature and tempered rather than indulging in yellow journalism.
Modern anesthesia is very safe as I have explained here. Thanks to excellent training, state of the art equipment and dedicated nursing, it is extremely rare to have an avoidable anesthetic mishap. Just as we take great care while crossing a street, by looking very carefully before crossing, you too can carry out due diligence from your part. Please ensure that your child is being operated in a great hospital setting that has backup PICUs in case things do go wrong. Needless to say, children and adolescents (< 18 years of age) should be operated by pediatric surgeons only and anesthesia should be administered by anesthetists with special ability/interest in pediatric anesthesia.