REGIONAL ANAESTHESIA Comparison of percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and ultrasound imaging for nerve localization†

Key points † Percutaneous nerve stimulation is a recently introduced technique to facilitate peripheral nerve block. † We evaluated the ability of this technique to localize nerves of the brachial plexus as verified by ultrasound imaging in 20 volunteers. † There was only a 10% concordance between the most superficial nerves identified by percutaneous stimulation and ultrasound imaging. Background. Percutaneous nerve stimulation (PNS) is a non-invasive technique to localize superficial nerves before performing peripheral nerve blocks, but its precision has never been evaluated by high-resolution ultrasound. This study compared stimulating points at the skin with the position of nerve structures determined by ultrasound. Correlations between distances and percutaneous stimulation thresholds were determined.