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[Anesthetic management of cesarean section in a patient with severe obesity]

Kosuke Wada1, Tomoyuki Kawamata, Hajime Sonoda

  • 1Department of Anesthesiology, Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine, Sapporo 060-8543.

Masui. the Japanese Journal of Anesthesiology
|September 19, 2003
PubMed

A 35-year-old pregnant woman (weight, 129.5 kg; height, 156 cm; 37 weeks of pregnancy) with a body mass index of 53 was scheduled for a cesarean section. It was thought that epidural or spinal anesthesia might result in complications due to her severe obesity. It was therefore decided to use general anesthesia following awake intubation. Her baby was delivered, and her Apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes after delivery were 8 and 9 points, respectively. During surgery, she developed hypoxia due to upper shift of the diaphragm. After surgery, she was extubated after improvement of her oxygenation under spontaneous breathing. This case demonstrates that difficulties may be encountered during anesthetic management of a severely obese patient undergoing cesarean section.

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