Pediatric Regional Anesthesia: A Practical Guideline for Daily Clinical Practice

The past two decades have seen remarkable progress in pediatric regional anesthesia. Significant efforts have been made to develop central and peripheral techniques that are both practicable and reliable, with increasing success and very low complication rates driving a growing appreciation for this subspecialty. Regional anesthesia can be used to optimize perioperative pain control, to avoid mechanical ventilation, and to take advantage of favorable immunomodulatory and gastrointestinal side effects in children. Implementing a broad spectrum of these techniques will require specialized knowledge of anatomic structures, experience to select appropriate techniques for specific surgical procedures, and considerable hand skills to execute these techniques. This review has been written to summarize state-of-the-art information about all relevant aspects of pediatric regional anesthesia and to provide a practical approach to how regional anesthesia in children can be implemented in daily clinical practice.