anasthesia regional block

<b><br>Introduction:</b> The assistance of anaesthesiologist is considered an inseparable part of most surgical procedures, with the exception of a small proportion of minor procedures performed under local anaesthesia. In hand surgery, a vast majority of procedures, even those lasting several hours, can be carried out under regional (brachial plexus block) or local (infiltration) anaesthesia. These can be delivered by the surgeons themselves, allowing the surgeries to be carried out without the assistance of anesthesiologists...

We conducted a postal questionnaire survey of the members of the Vascular Anasthesia Society of Great Britain and Ireland, asking questions about the provision of anasthesia for carotid endartectomy. Of 215 respondents, 187 were currently providing anasthesia for carotid endarterectomy. The majority of respondents (69%) always use general anasthesia for this operation but 99/215 (46%) had some experience of regional anasthesia for carotid endartectomy. Amongst those currently using regional anasthesia, combined deep and superficial cervical plexus block was the technique used by 71%...

Cross-clamping (XC) of the thoracic aorta induces a hyperdynamic circulation proximal to the aortic clamp. In this investigation, the effects of thoracic epidural anaesthesia (TEA) on the haemodynamic response to XC were studied in pigs. Seventeen pigs were anaesthetized with ketamine, and the thoracic aorta was cross-clamped for 30 minutes. In eight of the animals (TEA-group) a thoracic epidural block (3 ml 0.5% bupivacaine) was added to the general anaesthesia. Prior to XC there was a lower heart rate (HR), cardiac output (CO) and mixed venous oxygen saturation (SvO2) in the TEA-group compared to the nine animals with general anasthesia only (control-group)...