Regional anesthesia for pediatric knee surgery reduces pain, speeds recovery
Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - 05:02
in Health & Medicine
A recent study of an ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia technique, called femoral nerve block, shows that it leads to less opioid use and allows the majority of patients to go home within hours of surgery. Anesthesiologists use ultrasound to guide a needle to the specific surgical site and deliver local anesthetic to numb only the nerves in that region. A femoral nerve block numbs the femoral nerve, which runs close to the femoral artery and conducts signals running along the front of the thigh, the inner leg and the foot. By numbing this nerve, all feeling to those regions is blocked.