The addition of thoracic epidural anesthesia to general anesthesia during cardiac surgery may have a beneficial effect on clinical outcome. However, epidural catheter insertion in a patient anticoagulated with heparin may increase the risk of epidural hematoma. We report a case of epidural hematoma in a 55-year-old male patient who had a thoracic epidural placed under general anesthesia precedi...

Spontaneous cervical epidural hematoma is an uncommon cause of acute spinal cord compression. It usually occurs with sudden cervical or interscapular pain. Typically, increasing compression of the spinal cord leads to paralysis within minutes to hours after the onset of symptoms. The authors report a case of spontaneous cervical epidural hematoma with sudden onset of left side complete hemipleg...

BACKGROUND Postoperative pruritus, nausea, and vomiting are common side effects of intrathecal or epidural opioids. Intravenous ondansetron has been used for postoperative emesis. However, there are no reports regarding epidural ondansetron. Two studies were conducted to evaluate the prophylactic effects of epidural ondansetron for opioid-induced pruritus, nausea, and vomiting. METHODS Neurot...

RATIONALE Caudal epidural injection is one of the conventional treatments of chronic back pain. Even though spinal epidural hematoma after caudal epidural injection is rare but it can cause serious neurologic complication. PATIENT CONCERNS An 83-year-old woman taking cilostazol received caudal epidural steroid injection because of her chronic back pain. Six hours later, she experienced an acu...

A lumbar epidural varicose vein is a rare clinical condition that can lead to neurological deficits. 3 types of lumbar epidural varicose veins were described according to the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings: Type 1 is a thrombosed dilated epidural vein, type 2 is a non-thrombosed dilated epidural vein and type 3 is a sub-membraneous epidural hematoma. Enlarged epidural venous plexuses...

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) in trials involving external stimulation are easily conducted under local anesthesia. However, implantation of a permanent SCS system is painful, and can be intolerable in some patients. Epidural anesthesia can be used to perform the SCS implantation without discomfort if the patient can localize the area of paresthesia. However, little is known about epidural anes...

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 th...

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to determine whether epidural anesthesia would improve external cephalic version success in a safe and effective manner. STUDY DESIGN All women > 37 weeks' gestation with breech presentation scheduled for external cephalic version at the medical center from Dec. 1, 1993, to July 31, 1996, were randomized to receive an epidural or no epidural anesthesia. Under...

Epidural injection of hydroxyethyl starch may be a suitable alternative for treatment of post-dural puncture headache (PDPH) if epidural blood patch is contraindicated. We reported eight consecutive female patients with accidental dural puncture (ADP), among whom prophylactic or therapeutic epidural injection of hydroxyethyl starch was performed. Prophylactic epidural injection of hydroxyethyl ...

Epidural injections for chronic low back pain are controversial, and their effectiveness is debated. Although epidural injections are considered a minor procedure with low morbidity, catastrophic complications may occur. We describe a case of prosthetic valve endocarditis secondary to an epidural abscess after epidural injection to alert clinicians to this unusual association.