Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
-
Reg Anesth Pain Med · Apr 2020
Randomized Controlled TrialErector spinae plane versus paravertebral nerve blocks for postoperative analgesia after breast surgery: a randomized clinical trial.
Paravertebral nerve blocks (PVBs) are frequently used to treat pain during and following breast surgery, but have various undesirable risks such as pneumothorax. The erector spinae plane block (ESPB) also provides perioperative breast analgesia, but is purported to be easier to administer with a favorable safety profile. However, it remains unknown if the new ESPB provides comparable analgesia as the decades-old PVB technique. ⋯ PVBs provided superior analgesia and reduced opioid requirements following non-mastectomy breast surgery. To compare the relatively rare complications between the techniques will require a sample size 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than the current investigation; however, without a dramatic improvement in safety profile for ESPBs, it appears that PVBs are superior to ESPBs for postoperative analgesia after non-mastectomy breast surgery.
-
Reg Anesth Pain Med · Apr 2020
Thoracoscopic lung biopsy under regional anesthesia for interstitial lung disease.
Interstitial lung disease (ILD) management guidelines support lung biopsy-guided therapy. However, the high mortality associated with thoracoscopic lung biopsy using general anesthesia (GA) in patients with ILD has deterred physicians from offering this procedure and adopt a diagnostic approach based on high-resolution CT. Here we report that thoracoscopy under regional anesthesia could be a safer alternative for lung biopsy and effectively guide ILD treatment. ⋯ Thoracoscopy using regional anesthesia might be a safer alternative to lung biopsy in patients with ILD.
-
Reg Anesth Pain Med · Apr 2020
Current status of pain medicine training in anesthesiology and pain medicine residency programs in university hospitals of Korea: a survey of residents' opinions.
In Korea, anesthesiologists are expected to be mainstream pain medicine (PM) practitioners. However, anesthesiology and pain medicine (APM) residency programs mostly emphasize anesthesia learning, leading to insufficient PM learning. Therefore, this study evaluated the current status of PM training in APM residency programs in 10 Korean university hospitals. ⋯ Dissatisfaction with PM training was probably due to a structural tendency of the current program towards anesthesia training and insufficient clinical experience, which needs to be rectified, with a change in PM curriculum.