Articles: general-anesthesia.
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Anesthesia for cesarean section should ideally provide adequate muscle relaxation, analgesia, and narcosis or sedation for optimal operating conditions and safety to the dam. Since drugs that depress the dam must cross the blood-brain barrier, however, it is impossible to anesthetize the dam and not expose the fetuses to the anesthetic. No one agent or protocol is ideal for all dams, and satisfactory anesthesia for cesarean section can be induced in a number of ways. Cesarean section can be performed with either regional or general anesthesia.
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We tested the hypothesis that different anesthetic techniques for elective cesarean section would be reflected in the pattern of breathing and its control after birth. The pattern of breathing, including tidal volume, total breath duration (TTOT), minute ventilation, inspiratory (TI) and expiratory times, TI/TTOT ratio, and mouth occlusion pressure, was measured in 27 infants delivered by elective cesarean section during maternal epidural (lidocaine-carbon dioxide-epinephrine, n = 19) or general anesthesia (66% oxygen in N2O and 0.5% halothane, n = 8) at 10, 60, and 90 min and 3-5 days of age. ⋯ In general, at any given age the values of the respiratory parameters measured and their variability were similar between the two groups of infants. These findings indicate that the pattern of breathing after birth is not different following epidural or general anesthesia, and on the basis of our measurements, both epidural or general anesthesia appeared equally suitable for elective cesarean section.