[Local and regional analgesia after pediatric surgery: study in 116 patients]. / Técnicas locorregionales para analgesia perioperatoria en anestesia pediátrica: estudio en 116 pacientes.

OBJECTIVES: Pain control is essential to patient comfort and reduced stress response, morbidity, and mortality after pediatric anesthesia. We assessed analgesic quality and the incidence of complications of regional blocks in combination with general anesthesia. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Prospective study of 116 patients under 3 years of age who underwent surgery in our hospital over a period of 2 years. The studied patients were classified in 3 groups according to whether they received general anesthesia only, a regional block by single injection, or a caudal nerve block via catheter. We recorded demographic and intraoperative variables, postoperative analgesic requirements, and the time the first postoperative analgesic dose was needed. RESULTS: Analgesia was significantly more effective in the patients who received either type of regional block. The patients who received general anesthesia alone needed supplemental analgesia earlier than the others (P < .001); patients with nerve blocks required fewer doses of rescue analgesics (P < .001). The incidence of complications was low and all were minor. No case of caudal catheter contamination occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Regional nerve blocks combined with general anesthesia in children are effective and safe. Advantages of providing nerve blocks include hemodynamic stability, prolonged postoperative analgesia, lower consumption of analgesics, and few complications.

[Subarachnoid anesthesia: 100 years of an established technique]. / Anestesia subaracnoidea: 100 años de una técnica establecida.

Over the 100 years since the introduction of spinal anesthesia into clinical practice, this technique, like most others, has enjoyed varying degrees of popularity. The attraction of spinal anesthesia is easy to identify: a relatively simple technique is used to inject a very small amount of drug into a readily identifiable body compartment to provide deep anesthesia. However, the apparent simplicity of spinal anesthesia is as much as weakness as a strength, given that the technique can be put to use with relatively little understanding of its problems, which are what underlie the shifts in popularity that spinal anesthesia has suffered over the years. In addition to reviewing the history of spinal anesthesia and the local anesthetics and adjuvant drugs administered by this route, we discuss single-dose and continuous spinal injection, combined spinal-epidural technique, and spinal anesthesia for outpatient settings. The problems typical of dural puncture and placement of local anesthetics and adjuvant drugs into the intrathecal space are also reviewed.