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Updated: Mar 21, 2026

Author Spotlight: Enhancing Success of Ultrasound-Guided Neuraxial Anesthesia in Cases with Difficult Anatomy
Published on: January 31, 2025
Neuraxial Anesthesia in Parturients with Low Platelet Counts
Jeffrey Bernstein1, Betty Hua, Madelyn Kahana
1From the *Department of Anesthesiology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York; and †Department of Anesthesiology, Stony Brook University Medical Center, Stony Brook, New York.
Abstract:
The obstetric anesthesiologist must consider the risk of spinal-epidural hematoma in patients with thrombocytopenia when choosing to provide neuraxial anesthesia. There are little data exploring this complication in the parturient. In this single-center retrospective study of 20,244 obstetric patients, the incidence of peripartum thrombocytopenia (platelet count <100,000/mm) was 1.8% (368 patients). Of these patients, 69% (256) received neuraxial anesthesia. No neuraxial hematoma occurred in any of our patients. The upper 95% confidence limit for spinal-epidural hematoma in patients who received neuraxial anesthesia with a platelet count of <100,000/mm was 1.2%.
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