International anesthesiology clinics
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Int Anesthesiol Clin · Jan 1990
ReviewContinuous infusions of local anesthetics and narcotics for epidural analgesia in the management of labor.
It appears that complete analgesia for labor using epidural and subarachnoid opiates alone, with a minimum of side effects, remains an unfulfilled goal. However, the combination of extremely small doses of local anesthetics and opiate drugs seems to provide excellent analgesia with a minimum of side effects. ⋯ These drugs include catecholamines, clonidine, GABA agonists, substance P antagonists, prostaglandin synthetase inhibitors, and many other drugs capable of altering neural transmission in such a way that analgesia results. Obviously, labor analgesia is one area in which these combinations will be explored extensively, and the next few years should be very exciting ones.