A middle-aged woman presented to our emergency department stating that she had been performing her own acupuncture at home and had lost 1 of the needles. She stated that the treatment was for chronic neck pain. On further questioning, we learned that she had been unable to retrieve a needle placed in the midline of the upper cervical region posteriorly, with the end of the needle no longer palp...

A new proposal for spinal cord and brain treatment and protection due to injuries and diseases is made herein. It is composed of two 20G nylon catheters with 6 lateral holes arranged circumferentially within 3 cm from the tip and a closed end. One catheter is inserted into the epidural space and the other catheter is inserted into the spinal space in two different lumbar interspaces using an 18...

Spinal Hematoma The actual incidence of neurologic dysfunction resulting from hemorrhagic complications associated with neuraxial blockade is unknown; however, the incidence cited in the literature is estimated to be less than 1 in 150,000 epidural and less than 1 in 220,000 spinal anesthetics (Tryba 1993). In a review of the literature between 1906 and 1994, Vandermeulen et al. (Vandermeulen 1...

BACKGROUND Echogenicity of regional anesthesia needles has been tested on different preclinical models; however, previous studies were done in an ideal experimental setting utilizing high-frequency insonation and superficially located targets. Because steep-angle deep injections are typically required for spinal and other chronic pain procedures, and low-frequency transducers are used, further ...

EDITOR: Tyagi and Bhattacharya’s review of anticoagulants and spinal-epidural blockade is very interesting, but a glance at the section about antiplatelet agents shows that inappropriate MEDLINE searches and cross-checking with former reviews were made [1]. Wulf sampled case reports (1966–1995) [2] and Vandermeulen and colleagues conducted a literature search on the National Library of Medicine...

Lumbar epidural anesthesia is useful in a variety of chronic benign pain syndromes, including lumbar radiculopathy, low back pain syndrome, spinal stenosis, and vertebral compression fractures. Given the increased number of epidural nerve blocks being performed, some have reported unexplained complications of a transient or permanent nature and with varying degrees of severity. However, no case...

INTRODUCTION Adequate needling at LI11 (Quchi) can be achieved by perpendicular angulation of the needle so that the needle tip enters the extensor carpi radialis longus (ECRL) muscle, which corresponds to the dermatomes and myotomes of the fifth and sixth cervical spinal segments. Although indirect methods using modern technology can be used to examine the variable effects of different depths ...

Electrodiagnostic (EDX) testing, consisting of needle electromyography (EMG) and nerve conduction studies, is used to evaluate the integrity of the neuromuscular system, including upper and lower motor neurons, the neuromuscular junction, and skeletal muscle [1-5]. Conducted as an extension of the clinical examination, EDX testing is the primary method used to objectively measure and document p...