Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Jun 2020
Comparing outcomes after peripheral nerve block versus general anesthesia for lower extremity amputation: a nationwide exploratory retrospective cohort study in Japan.
The health benefits of peripheral nerve block (PNB) on postoperative complications after lower extremity amputation (LEA) compared with general anesthesia (GA) remains controversial. We performed a retrospective propensity score-matched cohort analysis to compare major outcomes after LEA with PNB versus GA. ⋯ There was no significant difference between groups in 30-day mortality or composite morbidity. The PNB group showed a significantly lower risk of postoperative delirium than the GA group. Our findings suggest that PNB may have advantages over GA in preventing postoperative delirium among patients undergoing LEA.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Jun 2020
Consensus practice guidelines on interventions for lumbar facet joint pain from a multispecialty, international working group.
The past two decades have witnessed a surge in the use of lumbar facet blocks and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) to treat low back pain (LBP), yet nearly all aspects of the procedures remain controversial. ⋯ Lumbar medial branch RFA may provide benefit to well-selected individuals, with MBB being more predictive than IA injections. More stringent selection criteria are likely to improve denervation outcomes, but at the expense of more false-negatives. Clinical trials should be tailored based on objectives, and selection criteria for some may be more stringent than what is ideal in clinical practice.