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Updated: Apr 25, 2026
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Published on: January 31, 2025
Pressure waveform-guided epidural catheter placement in comparison to the loss-of-resistance conventional method
Yuhua Gong1, Haixia Shi1, Jie Wu1
1Department of Anesthesiology, First Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia Medical College, Huhehot, Inner Mongolia, China.
Study Objectives:
To investigate pressure waveform-guided epidural catheter placement (PWEP) and its effect in clinical practice.
Design:
Single-center, prospective cohort study.
Setting:
University teaching hospital.
Patients:
3,326 patients undergoing thoracic, abdominal, and lower limb surgery.
Interventions:
1,614 underwent PWEP and 1,664 had the loss-of-resistance (LOR) technique.
Measurements:
Anesthesia success and catheter replacement-related complications were recorded.
Main Results:
The specificity and sensitivity of PWEP was higher than LOR, and it also provided higher satisfaction with anesthesia when compared with the LOR technique (62.8% vs 45.6 %; P < 0.05). PWEP also performed better than LOR in risk of anesthesia failure (0.4% vs 1.1%; P < 0.05) and catheter replacement-related complications (0% vs 0.6%; P < 0.05).
Conclusion:
PWEP is a reliable and useful technique for epidural catheter placement.
