OBJECTIVE To present the safety and efficacy of epidural blockade in children. METHODS A respective review was carried out at the King Khalid University Hospital (KKUH), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from April to December 2007. The patient age, type of surgery, epidural level block, technique, local anesthetic dose, and quality of epidural block were analyzed. RESULTS Thirty-eight epidural blockade...

Two patients who underwent thoracic epidural neurolysis after titration using local anesthetic are reported. Case 1 suffered serious back and epigastric pain arising from metastasis of lung cancer and Case 2 was not relieved right chest pain by costal metastasis from urethral cancer only by morphine. Block therapies improve the patients' quality of life if these underwent in opioid resistant pa...

INTRODUCTION Most pain physicians know that fluoroscopy might improve the safety, accuracy, and efficacy of nerve block; however, it is difficult to distinguish the previously administered contrast medium from the injecting contrast medium, and to identify accurate contrast medium diffusion flow in a case of existing radiodensities such as cement and screw. Digital subtraction angiography (DSA)...

BACKGROUND Accidental intrathecal injection of bupivacaine during epidural analgesia in labour remains a hazard, with the potential to cause total spinal anaesthesia and maternal collapse. Sacral block appears early after intrathecal injections compared with epidural ones, and we therefore used SI motor block to determine a safe and reliable test dose for epidural catheter misplacement. METHO...

Postherpetic neuralgia is the most frequent complication of herpes zoster. Treatment of this neuropathic pain syndrome is difficult and often disappointing. Although postherpetic neuralgia is generally a self-limited condition, it can last indefinitely. Continuous epidural blockade for patients with acute zoster can shorten the duration of treatment. However, continuous epidural block has some ...

Background The aim is to compare the clinical effect of three different concentrations of levobupivacaine (0.25%, 0.125%, and 0.0625%) on the sensory and motor block characteristics and mode of delivery during epidural labor analgesia. We also studied the pharmacokinetic profile of the three concentrations during labor. Materials and Methods Sixty pregnant females undergoing normal vaginal de...

Epidural block is useful for chronic pain and thoracic surgery. However, there are several complications, which include vessels or dural puncture, pleural puncture, misplacement of epidural catheter and trauma to the spinal cord. We report a case of intercostal misplacement of an epidural catheter in a 66-year-old patient who scheduled for left thoracotomy.

We report a case of adhesions in the epidural space caused by more than 200 times epidural blocks that were observed with epiduroscopy. A 41-year-old man had repeatedly undergone lumbar epidural blocks to treat pain in his leg, resulting in decreased efficacy of the epidural block. We described endoscopic findings that these adhesions were mostly consisted of adhesions formed from the soft conn...