Safety and efficacy of epidural analgesia

Epidural analgesia remains a widely used analgesic technique. This article aims to assess the safety of epidural analgesia by balancing efficacy and complications, of epidural analgesia for acute, labor and chronic pain.

Main indications for epidural analgesia include major open abdominal surgery, thoracotomy and labor analgesia. Past and current literature show that epidural analgesia leads to statistically significant, but possibly clinically less meaningful, reductions in pain scores compared with intravenous analgesia. The debate continues whether epidural analgesia leads to decreased complications and improved outcome. Noninferiority of alternative regional analgesic approaches, that is continuous-wound-infiltration, peripheral nerve blocks or surgical site infiltration, appears to be present and is promising for the future. Serious adverse events after epidural analgesia seem to occur more often than was previously thought and clinicians must realize that incidence rates differ in specific perioperative patient populations.

Epidural analgesia for obstetric analgesic purposes is considered to be well tolerated in young, healthy women, since efficacy has been proven and complications leading to permanent neurological damage seldomly occur. Safety of epidural analgesia for perioperative and chronic pain treatment is more difficult to balance; careful selection of appropriate patients cannot be over-emphasized.