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Analgesia During Labor and Delivery

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Encyclopedia of Pain

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Analgesia for labor and delivery is now safer than ever. Anesthesia related maternal mortality has decreased from 4.3 per million live births during the years 1979–1981 to 1.7 per million live births during the years 1988–1990. The increased use of regional anesthesia for the parturient is in part responsible for this decrease in mortality (Hawkins et al. 1997). Safety is the first and foremost goal of obstetrical anesthesia. For labor analgesia, a secondary goal is to minimize or eliminate maternal lower extremity muscle weakness associated with epidural and subarachnoid local anesthetics. Patients with less motor block are more satisfied with their anesthetic experience and decreasing motor block may improve obstetric outcome. Although controversial, motor blockade related to labor epidural analgesia has been implicated as a cause of forceps deliveries and cesarean delivery. Minimizing the motor block may attenuate or eliminate these effects (Chestnut 1997). In...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Yaakov Beilin

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  1. Yaakov Beilin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Physiological Institute, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Robert F. Schmidt

  2. Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, USA

    William D. Willis

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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Beilin, Y. (2007). Analgesia During Labor and Delivery. In: Schmidt, R., Willis, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Pain. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29805-2_196

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29805-2_196

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43957-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-29805-2

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