SPINAL OR GENERAL ANAESTHESIA FOR SURGERY OF THE FRACTURED HIP?

Prospective, multi-centre trial of mortality following general or spinal anaesthesia for hip fracture surgery in the elderly.

In a prospective randomized multi-centre study, the mortality following internal fixation surgery for fracture of the upper femur was investigated in 538 elderly patients allocated to receive subarachnoid blockade or general (narcotic-relaxant) anaesthesia. The 28-day mortality was 6.6% with subarachnoid, and 5.9% with general, anaesthesia. The difference was not significant (95% confidence lim...

Spinal Anaesthesia in Spinal Surgery

Thoracic Unilateral Spinal Cord Injury After Spinal Anaesthesia for Total Hip Replacement: Fate or Mistake?

Spinal anaesthesia is the most preffered anesthesia technique for total hip replacement, and its complications range from low entity (insignificant) to life threatening. The incidence of neurologic complications after neuraxial anaesthesia is not perfectly clear, although there are several described cases of spinal cord ischaemia. We present a case of unilateral T8-T11 spinal cord ischaemia fol...

Recovery after total intravenous general anaesthesia or spinal anaesthesia for total knee arthroplasty: a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND This study was undertaken to compare the effects of general anaesthesia (GA) and spinal anaesthesia (SA) on the need for postoperative hospitalization and early postoperative comfort in patients undergoing fast-track total knee arthroplasty (TKA). METHODS One hundred and twenty subjects were randomly allocated to receive either intrathecal bupivacaine (SA group) or GA with target c...

Cost-effective anaesthesia for outpatient arthroscopic knee surgery: spinal, desflurane, isoflurane or propofol anaesthesia?

Spinal anaesthesia (SA) is widely used in day surgery because it is easy and cheap. But how cheap is SA really, when compared to modern general anaesthesia with short-acting agents? The aim of this study was to compare SA to three modes of general anaesthesia in terms of the total costs of anaesthesia during outpatient knee arthroscopy (KA). There were 173 patients scheduled for elective KA ran...