Paravertebral Blockades

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Introduction In 1941, thoracic epidural anesthesia (TEA) was used to aid the anesthetist during thoracic surgery by providing anesthesia and analgesia (Blas, 1996). Since then, TEA has been considered the gold standard when developing an anesthetic plan for a thoracic patient. This method however, comes with associated risks of dural perforation, spinal cord damage through hematoma formation, infection, hypotension, and urinary retention (Dango et al., 2013). Limited research has been done on the use of paravertebral blockade for thoracic surgery. However, in recent years more providers are incorporating this technique and retrospective studies are being performed to evaluate its efficacy. The placement of the PVB has the added benefit …show more content…

A PVB provides ipsilateral somatic and sympathetic nerve blockade. The primary use of the PVB is inguinal, herniorrhaphy, and breast surgeries as well as acute management of pain in the case of rib fractures (Butterworth, Mackey, & Wasnick, 2013; El-Morsy, El-Deeb, El-Desouky, Elsharkawy, & Elgamal, 2012). More recently this technique is being researched for the use of postoperative pain control for patients having received some form of thoracic surgery. The PVB is technically an easy-to-learn procedure with noted success rates (El-Morsy et al., 2012). However, the New York School of Regional Anesthesia (NYSORA) suggests that this regional method is difficult to teach because it requires the anesthetist to be able to mentally envision the space in addition to skillful needle maneuvering techniques (n.d.). Complications of this procedure include inadvertent vascular puncture, ipsilateral Horner’s syndrome, hypotension, epidural or intrathecal spread, pleural puncture and pneumothorax (Batra, Krishnan, & Agarwal, 2011). Similar to other regional anesthesia techniques, the effectiveness of the block is dependent on the local anesthetic (LA) and its specific concentration and total

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