Abstract

To test the hypothesis that regional anesthesia (RA) employing a block room reduces anesthesia-controlled time for ambulatory upper extremity surgery compared with general anesthesia (GA).Retrospective cohort study.Outpatient surgery center of a university hospital.229 adult patients who underwent ambulatory upper extremity surgery over one year.Upper extremity surgery was performed with three different anesthetic techniques: 1) GA, 2) nerve block (NB) performed preoperatively, or 3) local anesthetic (LA), either Bier block or local anesthetic, administered in the operating room (OR).Demographic data, anesthesia-controlled time, and turnover time were recorded. Since the data were not normally distributed, differences in anesthesia-controlled time and turnover time were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test and post-hoc testing using one-way analysis of variance on the ranks of the observations, with Tukey-Kramer correction for multiple comparisons.Anesthesia-controlled time for NB (median 28 min) was significantly shorter than for GA (median 32 min, P = 0.0392). Anesthesia-controlled time for patients who received LA (median 25 min) was also significantly shorter than GA (P < 0.0001). However, turnover time did not differ significantly among the three groups.Peripheral nerve block performed preoperatively in an induction area or LA injected in the OR significantly reduces anesthesia-controlled time for ambulatory upper extremity surgery compared with GA. Turnover time is unaffected by anesthetic technique. These results may increase acceptance of RA in the ambulatory surgery setting.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jclinane.2008.08.019

View details for Web of Science ID 000267501500004

View details for PubMedID 19502033

View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2745934