Hadzic's Peripheral Nerve Blocks and Anatomy for Ultrasound-Guided Regional Anesthesia, 2e > Section 1. Foundations of Peripheral Nerve Blocks > Chapter 6. Indications for Peripheral Nerve Blocks Jeff Gadsden

Introduction

"During the past 20 years, increasing knowledge in functional regional anesthesia anatomy, coupled with new technologies for locating peripheral nerves, has resulted in expansion of regional anesthesia techniques. This phenomenon served to provide the clinician with a wide variety of techniques from which to choose. Nevertheless, many nerve block techniques are quite similar and result in a similar, if not exact, distribution of anesthesia. The proper choice of the nerve block for a particular surgical procedure and/or patient, however, is far more important than deliberation on the minutia of various technical techniques. In this chapter, a rational selection of the nerve block techniques is approached in three sections. In the first section, indications for common nerve blocks are listed with a short summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each technique selected. In the second section, specific protocols for intraoperative anesthesia and postoperative analgesia for the common surgical procedures are suggested as practiced by anesthesiologists affiliated with the St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals in New York. This cookbook approach was chosen to allow clinicians to duplicate the results that we have found, via trial and error, to work best in our own practice. The last section is a more comprehensive compendium of published medical literature on the indications for peripheral nerve blocks...."