• Naveen Davangere Siddappa, Jin-Sung Kim, and Ashwinkumar Vasant Khandge.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, South Korea.
• World Neurosurg. 2020 May 1; 137: 421-424.

BackgroundAn epidural nerve block injection is the most common modality of treatment for control of low backache associated with radiating pain. Epidural catheter injections are also widely used by pain physicians to control cancer pain. Epidural catheters could be associated with procedure-related complications, such as epidural hematoma, epidural abscess, and post-dural puncture headache, and rare complications, such as shearing or breakage of the catheter tip. In this report, we describe the full-endoscopic removal of a sheared epidural catheter fragment.Case DescriptionA man aged 24 years presented with low backache radiating to his left leg with numbness and weakness. Left-sided L4-L5 disc herniation was diagnosed on magnetic resonance imaging, and the patient was posted for an epidural nerve block. The epidural catheter broke during removal, and a 4-cm fragment was retained in the epidural space. We performed an interlaminar full-endoscopic removal of the sheared epidural catheter. Postoperatively, the patient reported excellent clinical outcome.ConclusionsInterlaminar full-endoscopic procedure could be used for the removal of the retained epidural catheter as a practical option.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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