Spinal anesthesia

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  • major reference

    parturition: Spinal anesthesia
    Spinal anesthesia (sometimes called spinal block) is produced when a local anesthetic agent, such as lidocaine or bivucaine, sometimes mixed with a narcotic, is injected into the cerebrospinal fluid in the lumbar region of the spine. This technique allows the woman to be awake, while producing extensive numbing of the abdomen, legs, and feet. Because it is a single injection, its duration is...
  • local drug therapy

    therapeutics: Local drug therapy
    ...or larger nerve trunks. These nerve blocks can provide relief in painful conditions like rib fractures, but they are most frequently used to anesthetize an extremity during hand or foot surgery. Spinal anesthesia and epidural anesthesia, in which a local anesthetic is injected into the subarachnoid or epidural space of the lumbar (lower back) area of the spinal canal, provide pain relief...
  • symptom of neurogenic shock

    cardiovascular disease: Neurogenic shock
    The maintenance of the tone of the blood vessels by the autonomic nervous system may be affected by severance of one of these nerves or by its interruption of the flow of nervous impulses. Thus, spinal anesthesia—injection of an anesthetic into the space surrounding the spinal cord—or severance of the spinal cord results in a fall in blood pressure because of dilation of the blood...
  • technique

    anesthetic: Local anesthetics
    ...by injecting a local anesthetic into the spinal canal, either into the space between the two membranes (the durae) that surround the cord (epidural anesthesia) or into the cerebrospinal fluid (spinal or intrathecal anesthesia). In spinal anesthesia, the specific gravity of the local anesthetic solution is appropriately adjusted, and the patient is positioned in such a way that the...
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