CRD summary This review evaluated the efficacy of continuous wound catheters in delivering local anaesthetic in postoperative analgesia. Continuous wound catheters were found to improve analgesia, reduce opioid use and side-effects, increase patient satisfaction and reduce hospital stay. However, these conclusions should be viewed with some degree of caution due to the heterogeneity of the incl...

Tiiis book is divided into two parts. The first part (leals wvith the anatomy of the region, where necessary in some detail, for, as the authors rightly point out in the preface, success depends in large measure on the knowledge of the relevant anatomy. The second half of the book showvs howv this knowledge may be used to produce analgesia for practically every operation on the head and neck. S...

Continuous infusion of local anaesthetic for epidural analgesia in obstetrics was first described in 1963. t However, this method of providing pain relief in labour did not become popular, probably because of the limitation of the mechanical pumps available at that time and also the tachyphylaxis associated with the use of lidocaine or mepivacaine. 2 Recently, continuous infusions have been des...

The skilful employment of local analgesia in surgery can only be relied upon where due consideration is paid to a variety of factors, so numerous that their mastery calls for no small degree of patience, and so essential that the neglect of any one of them will almost certainly lead to some degree of failure. The factors which it is necessary to consider may be reviewed under the following head...