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The preemptive effect of regional anesthesia on post-cesarean section pain
1Department of Anesthesiology, National Defense Medical Center/Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Background:
The treatment of post-cesarean section (C/S) pain is very important. Since no previous report discussed the preemptive effect of regional anesthesia on post-C/S pain, the present study was undertaken to evaluate the efficacy of the preemptive effect of regional anesthesia on post-C/S pain.
Methods:
Ninety parturients scheduled for C/S were enrolled into one of the three groups (n = 30, per each group). The parturients in group 1 and 2 received spinal anesthesia and epidural anesthesia, respectively, while those in group 3 received general anesthesia for C/S. Postoperative patient-controlled analgesia, by means of intravenous morphine, was used for all paturients to relieve post-C/S pain. The VAS of pain and total morphine consumption were evaluated in all 3 groups of patients.
Results:
The results showed that groups 1 and 2 consumed less morphine than that of group 3. Also, there was no difference between groups 1 and 2 in the amount of morphine consumed. The incidence of side effects was significantly higher in group 3 than in groups 1 and 2.
Conclusions:
We demonstrated that spinal or epidural anesthesia reduced the need of parenteral morphine postoperatively when compared with general anesthesia. We suggest that the use of regional anesthesia may provide a better preemptive effect for post-C/S pain.