Objective(s): The present study was aimed to investigate the influence of thoracic epidural blockade on hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension in rats. Materials and Methods: Forty eight Wistar rats were randomly divided into 4 equal groups, named normoxia hypoxia hypoxia/ ropivacaine and hypoxia/saline. Animals were placed in a hypoxia chamber and instrumented with epidural catheters at the t...

BACKGROUND Post lumbar surgery syndrome or failed back surgery syndrome with persistent pain continues to increase over the years. The speculated causes of post lumbar laminectomy syndrome include acquired stenosis, epidural fibrosis, arachnoiditis, radiculopathy, and recurrent disc herniation. Epidural fibrosis may account for as much as 20% to 36% of all cases of failed back surgery syndrome....

Epidural catheters inserted 8 cm within the epidural space are more likely to result in intravenous cannulation and unilateral block1. Epidural catheters inserted 2 or 4 cm within the epidural space are more likely to be dislodged than epidural catheters inserted 6 or 8 cm.1 Obese patients are at particular risk of epidural catheter displacement2. It is recommended that epidural catheters shoul...

background simultaneous administration of epidural local anesthetic agents (la) and general anesthetics (intravenous or inhaled) is a common procedure in patients undergoing major operations. the effects of epidural anesthesia during combined general-epidural anesthesia on the alertness level (cgea) in the awake phase and the doses of anesthetics have been reported. objectives the present study...

BACKGROUND Speculated causes of post lumbar surgery syndrome include epidural fibrosis, acquired stenosis, and facet joint pain among other causes. Even though fluoroscopically directed caudal epidural injections and facet joint interventions are effective in some patients, others continue to suffer with chronic persistent pain. Percutaneous adhesiolysis with target delivery of medications has ...

Spinal epidural haemorrhage may present as back pain associated with radicular symptoms and can be a catastrophic clinical scenario with progression to paraplegia or even sudden death. Being a rare entity, it needs a high index ofclinical suspicion to diagnose it. Fractures have been documented as a cause of hematorrachis but such hematomas only extend to one or two vertebral segments. Large ep...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate and compare the histopathologic effects of various hemostatic agents used in spinal surgery on an experimental laminectomy model in rats. METHODS There were 110 rats randomly allocated into 11 groups, including sham, control, AnkaferdBlood Stopper (herbal hemostatic), SeraSeal (agar and bovine factor proteins), FLOSEAL (gelatin granules and thrombin), SURGIFLO (gelatin p...

A MALE patient, 73 yr old, had a Flexitip Plus (Arrow International, Reading, PA) 19gauge end-hole, wire-reinforced thoracic epidural catheter inserted for postthoracotomy pain management. He underwent highresolution spiral computed tomography scan with the catheter in situ before its use to evaluate previous bronchoscopic findings. A composite set of sagittal computed tomography images (figs. ...

BACKGROUND Current methods of locating the epidural space rely on surface anatomical landmarks and loss-of-resistance (LOR). We are not aware of any data describing real-time ultrasound (US)-guided epidural access in adults. METHODS We evaluated the feasibility of performing real-time US-guided paramedian epidural access with the epidural needle inserted in the plane of the US beam in 15 adul...