[Success and failure rate in peridural anesthesia. A 1-year study]

The real significance of epidural anaesthesia is determined by its practicability in the daily routine. The present paper shows, that about 20% of all operations which will be anaesthetized by a large anaesthesia department can be done under epidural anaesthesia. In 84,6% of all patients under epidural anaesthesia, anaesthesia was satisfactory; 4.7% of epidural anaesthesias were failures. The difficulty of epidural puncture and of advancing the epidural catheter were examined, as well as the degree of the necessary sedation. The main complication is puncture of the dura, in our series in 1,7% of the cases. We also examined the results achieved in relation to the state of training and in special cases of epidural anaesthesia. In the most interesting special case, namely patients requiring repeated epidural anaesthesia the success rate decreased significantly and the number of complications increased. The dosage-scheme for local anaesthetic given by Bromage has been confirmed in our patients. A simplified diagram and an approximate formula for calculation of dosage are given.