Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2020
Effect of pterygopalatine blockade on perioperative stress and inflammatory outcomes following paediatric cataract surgery.
General anesthesia is required to perform pediatric cataract surgery. To reduce severity of surgical intervention and postoperative complications, regional techniques have been concomitantly used. The traditional regional ophthalmic techniques are retrobulbar, peribulbar and sub-Tenon blocks, which present some technical difficulties and associated complication risks. The pterygopalatine blockade has been exempt of many of these concerns as it is performed out of the orbit. The purpose of this study was to compare the analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects of the pterygopalatine blockade with retrobulbar block in children undergoing elective congenital cataract surgery. ⋯ The use of the pterygopalatine blockade as a component of anesthesia in pediatric cataract surgery allows reduction of the severity of surgical stress during surgical intervention, providing intraoperative hemodynamic stability and prolonged analgesia.