• Colin J L McCartney, Victoria Dickinson, Adam Dubrowski, Sheila Riazi, Paul McHardy, and Imad T Awad.
• Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 2075 Bayview Ave, Toronto, Ontario M4N3M5, Canada. colin.mccartney@utoronto.ca
• Reg Anesth Pain Med. 2010 Jul 1; 35 (4): 361-3.

Background And ObjectivesWe predicted that practitioners could identify injectate spread in a model of ultrasound-guided peripheral nerve block.MethodsBoth novices and experts in ultrasound-guided peripheral nerve block were asked to recognize the spread of local anesthetic in a gelatin ultrasound phantom. In a blinded and randomized fashion, these participants were observed to either successfully or unsuccessfully state whether an injection had been made.ResultsTwelve novices and 8 experts each completed the trials. Accuracy, Sensitivity and specificity were calculated for all trials. Users attained a very high accuracy and sensitivity (> 85%) as well as specificity (> 90%) with ultrasound in this model.ConclusionsThis study shows that ultrasound is a reliable method of detecting injectate spread in a gelatin phantom model.

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