They are! For other major medical procedures epidurals and similar nerve blocks are usually combined with sedatives or other drugs to help keep the patient comfortable.
Childbirth is generally just an epidural because the mother is an active participant pushing the baby out, most sedatives are dangerous for the baby, and the mother wants to be able to see and hold the baby right away, not forget the first hour of the baby’s life in a medicated haze.
Hello. Work in the anesthesia department.
We use spinals for hip or knee surgery. Keeps the patient numb during the case and usually same day discharge vs general anesthesia. ( Longer recovery time in pacu and more drugs and anesthesia gas used.)
Epidurals are primarily used for labor analgesia.
Regional blocks are used for limbs. Examples would be shoulder or knee surgeries.Helps with post operative pain anywhere from 12-24hrs.
Sometimes we use regional blocks for broken ribs but much higher risk due to proximity of the lungs being so close to the ribs.
Some surgeons prefer both a spinal and also a regional block. All patient and surgeon specific.
This has a few parts so I’ll break it down. Epidurals are used in child birth because they offer anesthesia from pain but while allowing the patient to still be conscious and push out a baby. During surgery it’s generally preferable for the patient to be unconscious as well as not feeling pain, so an epidural is not recommended, general anesthesia is. For certain procedures like limb surgery or hand surgery a similar concept can be used called a nerve block, where only the nerve in that one limb is anesthetized, however the rest of the body is not. This is preferable when you want someone to be able to go home after a procedure like in ambulatory surgery or hand laceration repairs. It’s really all about what you need from the patient, while making them as comfortable as possible, the first law of medical ethics is to do no harm for a reason.
They do! They are known neuraxial blocks, which include spinal, epidural, and other commonly practiced regional anesthesia techniques. (I work for an anesthesiology group.) As a matter of fact, today I coded the billing for a spinal block on a patient who shoved a “foreign body” up his urethra and had to have it surgically removed.
Latest Answers