UNLABELLED We present a case of a patient who developed a retroperitoneal bleeding after spinal anesthesia using 22-gauge Quincke needle, with the paramedian approach. Two attempts were needed to accomplish the block. Four hours later the patient complained of back pain radiating to her left calf, with weakness of the quadriceps muscle. Computed tomography revealed a large retroperitoneal hemat...

Objective: Less diameter needles may cause less side effect in lumbar anesthesia. However, some Chinese anesthesiologists consider that bigger needles are suitable for emergency surgery, because it can shorten the puncture period. Present study aimed to compare 25-gauge (G) pencil point needle with 22G cutting needle for emergency caesarean section. Methods: In this prospective study, 200 femal...

Introduction: MR guidance is being used for a host of spine injections and pain management procedures such as discography, periradicular nerve blocks, sympathetic blocks, celiac plexus blocks, sacroiliac joint injections, and facet (zygoapophysial) joint neurotomies. MR imaging provides exceptional depiction of the patho-anatomy in the vertebral column and intervertebral discs and also provides...

INTRODUCTION Although uncommon, selective cervical nerve root blocks can have serious complications. The most serious complications that have been reported include cerebral infarction, spinal cord infarction, transient quadriplegia and death. CASE PRESENTATION A 40-year-old Japanese woman with a history of severe right-sided cervical radicular pain was scheduled to undergo a right-sided C6 se...

OBJECTIVE To compare the visibility and procedural parameters between a standard spinal needle and a new laser-etched needle (LEN) in real-time ultrasonography guided lumbar medial branch access in a phantom of the lumbosacral spine. METHODS We conducted a prospective single-blinded observational study at a rehabilitation medicine center. A new model of LEN was manufactured with a standard 22...

BACKGROUND Any landmark-based regional anaesthetic technique raises two important issues. The first is the accuracy of placement of the needle and thus the local anaesthetic in a 'blind' technique and the second is the potential for damage to adjacent structures. We designed a prospective, blinded study in an adult general surgical population to evaluate with ultrasound the placement of the nee...

The utilization of spinal interventional pain techniques has grown rapidly over the last decade. However, practitioners use widely different techniques in these procedures, particularly in the use of image guidance. The importance of image guidance was highlighted by the fact that in recent systematic reviews on therapeutic effectiveness of epidural steroid injections and facet joint interventi...

In image-guided brachytherapy (IGBT), accurate percutaneous intervention of needle and precise placement radiation sources are challenge tasks. In traditional prostate brachytherapy, needles are introduced through fixed, parallel holes of a template where the maneuverability of the needle is extremely limited. The accuracy and consistency of needle placement and seed delivery is subject to vari...

Needle placement is an important procedure in many medical fields, especially in diagnosis (for the achievement of biopsies) or cancer treatment procedures (like brachytherapy). The paper presents an extensive study of the workspace for an innovative parallel robot designed for needle placement procedures. The singularities of the parallel robot are exhaustively analysed and the possibilities o...

BACKGROUND previous evidences suggested that traditional sitting position (flexion of knees approximately 90°, and adduction of hips while feet rest on a stool) and hamstring stretch position (sitting position with maximum extension of knees, adduction of hips, and forward bending) both reversed the lumbar lordosis and the number of spinal needle-bone contacts were identical when placing patien...