The quality of analgesia, patient satisfaction and incidence of side effects following a single bolus of epidural morphine were compared with patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) with meperidine during the first 24 hr after elective Caesarean section. Seventy-five women were randomly assigned to three equal groups. Group I received 30 mg epidural meperidine after delivery and PCEA with ...

Postoperative epidural analgesia often needs rate readjustment using top-ups. Patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) is said to reduce the requirement of epidural top-ups when compared to continuous epidural analgesia (CEA). We compared CEA and PCEA in major thoracic and abdominal surgery, in a cohort study. The primary endpoint was the required number of epidural top-ups. Secondary endpo...

AIMS To find out the efficacy of epidural analgesia in providing continuous pain relief for patients undergoing brachytherapy for cervical cancer. SETTINGS Teaching Hospital. DESIGN Retrospective Study. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 152 patients of cervical cancer received epidural analgesia during 18 to 21 hours of pelvic brachytherapy. Epidural top up was given using 60-100 microg of...

BACKGROUND Postoperative pain after major open gynecologic surgeries requires appropriate pain management. OBJECTIVES This study aimed at comparing perioperative patient controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) and patient controlled intravenous analgesia (PCA) after gynecologic oncology surgeries. PATIENTS AND METHODS In this clinical trial study, 90 patients with American society of anesthesi...

UNLABELLED Extensive spine surgery is associated with postsurgical pain. Epidural pain therapy may reduce postoperative stress responses and thereby influence immune functions. In a randomized, controlled, double-blinded prospective trial, 54 patients received either conventional patient-controlled IV analgesia (PCIA; morphine 3 mg/15 min) or patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA; 0.125% ...

Labour analgesia has become almost synonymous with central neuraxial analgesia. Various techniques are in use from single epidural injection, continuous epidural infusion, combined spinal epidural, patient controlled epidural analgesia to programmed intermittent epidural bolus. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages though the purpose remains the same:a painless labour and a healt...

BACKGROUND Various options are available for the provision of analgesia following major surgical procedures including systemic opioids and regional anesthetic techniques. Regional anesthetic techniques offer the advantage of providing analgesia while avoiding the deleterious adverse effects associated with opioids including nausea, vomiting, sedation and respiratory depression. Although used co...

There is no consensus on the optimal local anesthetic agent to initiate labor analgesia for patients in active labor. Currently used local anesthetic agents for initiating labor analgesia include 0.25% bupivacaine, 0.5% bupivacaine, 0.2% ropivacaine without or with various types and doses of opioids. All these agents are administered in incremental doses and are relatively "slow onset" in initi...

PURPOSE To investigate if early epidural analgesia can influence fetal head engagement into the pelvis and if it can increase the rate of transverse and asynclitic position during labour. MATERIALS AND METHODS 195 women with combined spinal-epidural analgesia (CSE) or without neuraxial analgesia were studied. CSE was performed using a mixture of ropivacaine 0.02% with 0.3 microg/ml of sufenta...

Epidural analgesia is an extremely effective and popular treatment for labor pain. In this review, we trace the history of the use of epidural analgesia and its refinements. We then outline the goals of treatment and methods used to attain those goals. The use of low concentrations of local anesthetics, combined with lipid-soluble opioids, does not impede the progress of labor or depress the ne...