What is Regional Anesthesia?

Regional anesthesia is a type of anesthesia. It blocks pain to a part of the body without causing the patient to sleep.

Regional anesthesia is used to make the body numb for surgery:

• It may be used with high-risk surgical patients. It is safer for them than general anesthesia .
• It has been proven beneficial in trauma , operation-related pain, and short and long term medical disease and pain states.
• Epidural anesthesia is often used during childbirth to relieve labor pains.
• It has been shown to help people be mobile sooner after surgery and increases duration of pain relief.

Anesthesia Injection into Spinal Canal—Epidural © 2009 Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.

Possible Complications

Complications are rare, but no procedure is completely free of risk. If you are planning to have anesthesia, your doctor will review a list of possible complications, which may include:

• Pain and tenderness around the injection site
• Bruising, infection, or bleeding of the injection site
• Headache
• Decrease in blood pressure
• Nerve damage
• Medicine mistakenly injected into a vein or artery
• Damage to organs

Some factors that may increase the risk of complications include:

• Current or past health problems
• Taking medicines, supplements, herbal remedies, or blood thinners
• Allergies
• Smoking
• Drinking alcohol
• Using recreational drugs
• History of adverse reactions to anesthesia

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