Epinephrine does not prolong lidocaine spinal anesthesia in term parturients

The effect of adding epinephrine to spinal anesthesia performed with lidocaine in young, healthy patients was determined in a prospective, controlled, randomized double-blind study. Patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group received lidocaine in dextrose, and the other, lidocaine in dextrose plus epinephrine. Maximum segmental level, time to maximum level, and duration as determined by time to two-segment regression were determined for each of the two groups. There were no significant differences between the two groups in any of the observed parameters, most notably, duration. The present results substantiate those from a previous study in an older population that showed that epinephrine did not significantly prolong lidocaine spinal anesthesia. The present results do not, however, support the hypothesis based upon these earlier data that failure of epinephrine to prolong lidocaine spinal anesthesia is restricted to elderly patients.