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Neurological complications after anaesthesia. A follow‐up of 18 000 spinal and epidural anaesthetics performed over three years
Author(s) -
Dahlgren N.,
Törnebrandt K.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
acta anaesthesiologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1399-6576
pISSN - 0001-5172
DOI - 10.1111/j.1399-6576.1995.tb04190.x
Subject(s) - medicine , anesthesia , surgery , spinal anesthesia , epidural space , lesion
17 733 consecutive central blocks (8501 spinal and 9232 epidural anaesthetics) performed during a three‐year period were analyzed for alleged complications. Neurological complications related to anaesthesia were reported in 1 7 cases of which 13 patients had persisting lesions after three spinal and ten epidural blocks. In two patients given spinal anaesthesia, the technique was inadequate. In seven epidural blocks, the connection between neurological lesion and the anaesthetic technique could be argued. In five of these cases, polyneuropathy or nonspecific neurological symptoms were present. Three complications after epidural blocks were paraplegias caused by spinal haematomas in patients with deranged haemostatic capacity.