• Hiroshi Umegaki and Takeshi Umegaki.
• Masui. 2014 Nov 1; 63 (11): 1241-8.

BackgroundIn cesarean deliveries, it is important to prevent deep vein thrombosis in the lower limbs as this can result in pulmonary embolisms. Taking post-operative analgesia into account it is preferable to use an anesthesia method that allows early ambulation of patients. It is therefore necessary to use epidural anesthesia as a sole anesthesia method for cesarean deliveries.MethodsIn an analysis of 633 cesarean delivery patients who had been administered only epidural anesthesia, we investigated and compared the time to ambulation and cessation of continuous epidural infusion in groups that had received epidural puncture either at L1-2 or L2-3 space.ResultsThe postoperative time to ambulation in the L1-2 puncture group was 189.9 ± 56.1 minutes. Postoperative analgesia administered via continuous epidural infusion of local anesthetic was discontinued due to remaining paralysis in 2.5% of the L1-2 puncture group, which was significantly lower than the L2- 3 puncture group (7.6%).ConclusionsOur findings showed that it is possible to utilize only epidural anesthesia for cesarean deliveries. Using lumbar epidural anesthesia with L1-2 puncture reduced a postoperative time to ambulation to less than 3 hours 10 minutes.

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