BACKGROUND Gastrointestinal paralysis, nausea and vomiting, and pain, are major clinical problems following abdominal surgery. Anaesthetic and analgesic techniques that reduce pain and postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), and prevent or reduce postoperative ileus, may reduce postoperative morbidity, duration of hospitalisation and hospital costs. OBJECTIVES To compare effects of postoper...

BACKGROUND Major spine surgery with a dorsal or ventrodorsal approach causes severe postoperative pain. The use of continuous epidural analgesia through one or two epidural catheters placed intraoperatively by the surgeon has been shown to provide efficient postoperative pain control. In this prospective unblinded study, the authors compared the efficacy of continuous intravenous morphine with ...

BACKGROUND We evaluated the epidural administration of tezampanel, a non-N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonist, in a rat model for postoperative pain. We sought to determine if this drug affects nociception when administered epidurally by testing its effects on responses to heat in normal rats. The effects of epidural tezampanel on pain-related behaviors in rats that underwent plantar incisi...

We describe the case of a 40-year-old man with spontaneous intracranial hypotension who presented with cervical radiculopathy associated with epidural venous engorgement. Epidural venous engorgement can occur secondary to intracranial hypotension and manifests intracranially as pachymeningeal venous engorgement. In the cervical spine, two cases of epidural venous engorgement due to intracranial...

results first needle placement without imaging resulted in blood return in 1/199 participants and positive epidurography in 179/199 (90%). minimal needle repositioning resulted in a positive epidurogram in the remaining 19 attempts. no intravascular injection patterns were observed. conclusions this compares favorably to published success rates of fluoroscopically-guided technique and was well ...

ow back pain combined with radicular pain remains as one of the most challenging musculoskeletal problems for its therapeutic management (1). This malady results from nerve root impingement and/or inflammation that causes neurologic symptoms in the distribution of the affected nerve root(s). Conservative treatment, percutaneous spine interventions and surgery have all been used as treatments; a...

We report the occurrence of an epidural haematoma after the removal of a lumbar epidural catheter, which had been inserted 2 days previously for surgery to revise a thrombosed femoral-popliteal graft. Pre-operatively the patient received intravenous heparin by infusion, but this was stopped 7 h prior to epidural insertion. Coagulation studies were normal. The epidural catheter insertion was unr...

Extranodal lymphomas constitute 20% to 30% of all non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. The common sites involved are skin, stomach, brain, and small intestine. Epidural localization is a rare site for lymphomas, accounting for 10% of spinal epidural tumors. Lymphomas occurring primarily in the epidural space without other previously detected lymphomatous foci (i.e., primary spinal epidural lymphomas) repre...

BACKGROUND Identify variables associated with intrapartum epidural use. METHODS Odds ratios were calculated to quantify associations between selected variables and epidural use using a population-based case-control study of Washington State birth certificate data from 2009. RESULTS Non-Whites had 10 - 45% lower odds of epidural use relative to Whites. Foreign-born women had 25 - 45% lower o...

OBJECTIVE Epidural venous varicosity (congestion of the epidural vein) is rarely introduced as an influential factor of clinical symptoms. However, there are several studies suggesting that epidural venous varicosity results in neurologic symptoms. We would like to highlight evidence that epidural venous varicosity results in neurologic symptoms and the relation between epidural venous varicosi...