BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The Analgesia Nociception Index is an index used to measure the levels of pain, sympathetic system activity and heart rate variability during general anesthesia. In our study, Analgesia Nociception Index monitoring in two groups who had undergone spinal stabilization surgery and were administered propofol-remifentanil (Total Intravenous Anesthesia) and sevoflurane-remi...

OBJECTIVE To examine the status of obstetric epidural analgesia services in Hong Kong public hospitals in 2001, and to compare findings with those from a similar survey conducted in 1995. DESIGN Postal questionnaire survey. SETTING Hospital Authority hospitals in Hong Kong offering an obstetric and delivery service. PARTICIPANTS Chiefs of Service of departments of anaesthesia and coordina...

BACKGROUND Pain relief during labour is a topic of major interest in the Netherlands. Epidural analgesia is considered to be the most effective method of pain relief and recommended as first choice. However its uptake by pregnant women is limited compared to other western countries, partly as a result of non-availability due to logistic problems. Remifentanil, a synthetic opioid, is very suitab...

Hypnotic analgesia in some respects resembles opiate analgesia. We tested the hypothesis that some features of hypnotic analgesia are mediated through neuronal pathways activating specific opiate receptors in brain. The opiate antagonist naloxone had no effect on hypnotic analgesia in three subjects. Thus, the hypothesis was not confirmed.

Objective- To evaluate the effects of bupivacaine (B), ketamine (K), and a combination of bupivacaine and ketamine (BK) after lumbosacral epidural analgesia in sheep.   Design- Experimental study.   Animals- Nine healthy male and non-pregnant female Iranian Chall sheep with mean body weight of 38.9 ± 15.1 kg.   Procedures- Animals were selected randomly and three treatments administered. The ...

Antidepressant agents inhibit the neuronal reuptake of monoamines such as serotonin (5-HT), noradrenaline (NA), and dopamine (DA). Several clinical and animal studies have advocated the use of these agents in the management of pain. In this study, therefore, the possibility of a correlation between the analgesic activity of six serotonin specific reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants an...

Aversive events such as electric shock lead to analgesia. There have been differing views with regard to whether the aversive event itself can lead to analgesia as a direct unconditioned reaction, or whether the analgesia is instead a reaction to fear conditioned to cues present during shock or to other associative processes initiated by the aversive event. Maier (1989, 1990) has argued that av...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW This article reviews the challenging practice of systemic analgesia as an alternative to epidural analgesia for labor pain, and places remifentanil within the context of opioid analgesics suitable for managing for labor pain. RECENT FINDINGS Although systemic opioids have long been used for labor analgesia, they have become less popular because of frequent maternal and neona...