Sciatic Nerve Block for Ankle/Foot Surgeries. A Comparison Between a Premixed Solution of Lidocaine Plus Bupivacaine and Consecutive Infiltration of Lidocaine and Bupivacaine

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2013-01-01

Summary

Regional anaesthesia has become the cornerstone of multimodal analgesia. With the advent of ultrasound guided nerve blocks regional anaesthesia has achieved both greater efficacy and a better safety profile as the injection of local anaesthetic is performed under direct vision. This has allowed a reduction of the amount of local anaesthetic injected as compared to peripheral nerve stimulation technique . Blockade of sciatic nerve combined with saphenous nerve provides anaesthesia and analgesia for ankle/foot surgeries. Various combinations of local anaesthetics have been used to provide optimal blockade . A mixture of lidocaine with a long acting local anaesthetic is commonly used. This provides a rapid onset of blockade, but of a consistently shorter duration compared to a long acting local anaesthetic alone. We hypothesize that sequential perineural injection of lidocaine and bupivacaine provides similar onset but a longer duration of sensory block compared to the same dose and volume of local anaesthetic mixed in advance.

• Phase: Phase 4

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Cork University Hospital
• Treatments: Bupivacaine; Epinephrine; Epinephryl borate; Lidocaine; Racepinephrine