Journal of clinical anesthesia
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Dose dependent reduction in median effective concentration (EC50) of ropivacaine with adjuvant dexmedetomidine in labor epidural analgesia: An up-down sequential allocation study.
Adjuvant dexmedetomidine can be used to reduce the required concentration of ropivacaine for labor epidural analgesia. However, the potency of dexmedetomidine has not been fully studied. The purpose of this study was to determine the median effective concentration (EC50) of ropivacaine with adjuvant dexmedetomidine. ⋯ In this study, the lowest concentration of dexmedetomidine in ropivacaine with the greatest clinical effect was 0.4 μg/ml, which is important because there may be no additional analgesic benefit of dexmedetomidine greater than 0.4 μg/ml.