Restless Legs Syndrome and Spinal Anesthesia

To the Editor: The restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a common sensorimotor disorder of unknown cause affecting approximately 10% of the population.1 One uncontrolled study showed that spinal anesthesia caused postoperative RLS.2 We conducted a prospective study to determine whether the occurrence of postoperative RLS was associated with the type of anesthesia. Patients scheduled for surgery and general or spinal anesthesia were recruited from our hospital's lists of patients undergoing elective surgery (Table 1). Using a standardized questionnaire (see the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this letter at www.nejm.org), one of us interviewed patients — on admission and . . .