An Anesthesiologists Thoughts on the Early Epidural 'News'
Posted by Clark Venable on 4/23/2005
The New England Journal of Medicine just published The Risk of Cesarean Delivery with Neuraxial Analgesia Given Early versus Late in Labor and it has gotten national attention, including a segment on the Today show on NBC on February 17th. There's nothing here which was not known before. It's a nice study nonetheless, but readers should be aware of several other issues.
There's really nothing here that's new or that we haven't known before. I've been using neuraxial narcotic in women not yet sufficiently dilated for local anesthetic for ten years. I don't like doing it because I find the incidence of prolonged decelerations in the fetal heart rate trace that sometimes occurs makes people very, very nervous. By 'people' I mean patient, family, nurses, obstetricians,......and yours truly. This study in fact confirms that tendency:
To be specific, the incidence of prolonged decels was 3.9% vs. 0.6% (p < 0.003). I'm not saying this is a reason to avoid the technique, only that the obstetrical service needs to be prepared for it when it happens and know how to deal with it.
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