Anesthesia and analgesia
-
Around World War I, American novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote several plays, one of which, "Laughing Gas," explores the odd experience of a physician undergoing surgery with nitrous oxide/oxygen anesthesia. The content of this play and its relationship to Dreiser's career are examined.
-
Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 1989
Comparative StudyTime-courses of zones of differential sensory blockade during spinal anesthesia with hyperbaric tetracaine or bupivacaine.
The purposes of this study were twofold: to compare bupivacaine and tetracaine spinal anesthesia with regard to the zones of differential sensory blockade and to evaluate the time-courses of the widths of the zones of differential sensory blockade during spinal anesthesia. In 51 patients, the most rostral levels of sensory denervation to light touch, pinprick, and temperature discrimination were measured. There was no statistically significant difference in the height of sensory blockade in the 29 patients given bupivacaine and in the 22 patients given equipotent doses of tetracaine. ⋯ The width of the zones of differential blockade also remained unchanged within each group during onset, maintenance, and regression of anesthesia. Changes in, and absolute levels of, blood pressure and heart rate were similar with both bupivacaine and tetracaine throughout. We conclude that zones of differential sensory blockade are essentially the same with tetracaine and bupivacaine, that the widths of the zones of differential sensory blockade remain constant during onset, maintenance, and offset of spinal anesthesia, and that bupivacaine and tetracaine are associated with similar changes in heart rate and blood pressure during spinal anesthesia.
-
Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 1989
Nitrogen-sparing effect of epidural administration of local anesthetics in colon surgery.
A nitrogen-sparing effect of epidural anesthesia has been clearly demonstrated in gynecological and lower abdominal surgery. To determine if epidural anesthesia also has a protein-sparing effect during major upper or mid-abdominal surgery, postoperative nitrogen balance and 3-methylhistidine urinary excretion (an index of skeletal muscle protein catabolism) were measured for 6 days in 28 patients who had undergone colon resection for cancer with general anesthesia (N2O-O2-1% enflurane) either supplemented with low dose fentanyl plus intermittent systemic pentazocine for postoperative pain (n = 13), or the same general anesthetic plus epidural injection of either etidocaine 1% intraoperatively and bupivacaine 0.25% postoperatively (n = 8) or meperidine (n = 7) for 48 hr after skin incision. ⋯ There was a significant correlation between the daily urinary excretion of 3-methylhistidine and the daily nitrogen balance in the three groups. This study suggests that in colon surgery, epidural analgesia with local anesthetics in the postoperative period improves nitrogen balance and this effect takes place partly in the muscle.