Local anesthetics are commonly used in the perioperative environment to facilitate surgical procedures or to provide postoperative pain management for patients. The use of local anesthetics, however, introduces the risk of complications resulting from local anesthetic systemic toxicity and the risks of increased morbidity and mortality for the surgical patient. Systemic toxicity from the inject...

BACKGROUND Since the introduction of cocaine in 1884, local anesthetics have been used as a mainstay of pain management. However, numerous studies over the past several decades have elucidated the supplemental role of local anesthetics as antimicrobial agents. In addition to their anesthetic properties, medications such as bupivacaine and lidocaine have been shown to exhibit bacteriostatic, bac...

It is well known that both local and volatile anesthetics depress myocardial functions. This study was performed to evaluate the combined effects of commonly utilized local anesthetics (bupivacaine, mepivacaine, and lidocaine) and a volatile anesthetic (isoflurane) on heart rate and myocardial contractility in an isolated rat working heart preparation using each local anesthetic at 0 to 3 x 10(...

Background: Intrauterine Device (IUD) is an effective and long term method of contraception that can be used without continued effort by the user to prevent pregnancy perfectly. Pain during IUD insertion is one of the obstacles to properly using the device. Thus, using different methods of analgesia and anesthesia to alleviate this pain has been studied by many researchers. This review article ...

General anesthetics are known to cause depression of the freezing point of transitions in biomembranes. This is a consequence of ideal mixing of the anesthetic drugs in the membrane fluid phase and exclusion from the solid phase. Such a generic law provides physical justification of the famous Meyer-Overton rule. We show here that general anesthetics, barbiturates, and local anesthetics all dis...

THIS issue of the Journal contains a very exciting clinical report that describes the clinical efficacy of epidural sufentanil and neostigmine in laboring women. The authors examined the analgesic effects of different combinations of the two drugs without local anesthetic during the first stage of oxytocin-augmented labor. They found that a mixture of 10 g of sufentanil with 500 g of neostigmin...

THIS issue of the Journal contains a very exciting clinical report that describes the clinical efficacy of epidural sufentanil and neostigmine in laboring women. The authors examined the analgesic effects of different combinations of the two drugs without local anesthetic during the first stage of oxytocin-augmented labor. They found that a mixture of 10 g of sufentanil with 500 g of neostigmin...

The accidental overdose of local anesthetics may prove fatal. The commonly used amide local anesthetics have varying adverse effects on the myocardium, and beyond a certain dose all are capable of causing death. Local anesthetics are the most frequently used drugs amongst anesthetists and although uncommon, local anaesthetic systemic toxicity accounts for a high proportion of mortality, with lo...