Abstract
General anesthesia is associated with substantially greater maternal risk than regional anesthesia due to difficult airway management or aspiration related deaths. Spinal and epidural anesthesia have therefore become more widely utilized for cesarean section. Spinal anesthesia is simple to institute, rapid in its effect, and produces excellent operating conditions. Continuous epidural analgesia is more titratable, may produce less hemodynamic changes, and can be topped up if surgery is prolonged or postoperative pain relief is required. Spinal anesthesia is the most commonly used technique for elective cesarean section where epidural is most used to convert labor epidural analgesia to surgical anesthesia. The introduction of combined spinal-epidural anesthesia (CSEA) may offer benefits of both spinal and epidural anesthesia.
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Capogna, G. (2017). Selection of Anesthesia Methods. In: Capogna, G. (eds) Anesthesia for Cesarean Section. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42053-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42053-0_3
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