Patients were monitored for HR and BP after administration of
caudal block at 0, 5, 15, 30, 45, 60, 120 and 180 minutes and the values were recorded.
The present study was undertaken to compare the postoperative analgesic efficacy and duration of analgesia of ropivacaine alone and ropivacaine with dexmedetomidine combination in
caudal block in paediatric patients.
Patients were then placed in lateral decubitus position and
caudal block was given with 23 gauge hypodermic needle, according to their randomly allocated groups.
Pablo M Ingelmo et al [16] also compared similar drugs who found that there was no significant difference between the study drugs in terms of analgesia, but the effectiveness of
caudal block was more with bupivacaine and levobupivacaine than ropivacaine.
The type of needle used in our study, though standard in ours and many other centres, is not accepted by all as the appropriate needle for performing a
caudal block since it may carry the risk of introducing cutaneous and subcutaneous tissues into the caudal (and/or subarachnoid) space and has been implicated in the genesis of epidermoid tumours (31).
who reported the mean duration of analgesia after
caudal block using bupivacaine and morphine (0.03 mg/kg) was 12-26 hrs with a mean duration of (20.8 [+ or -] 3-4 hrs).
Blood pressure was also very much stable in GA with
caudal block group, 32 patients out of 50 there was no rise in basic blood pressure, whereas in patients who received only GA there was significant rise >20% in basic blood pressure, 37 patients out of 50.
Pharmacokinetic studies of Ropivacaine showed that 1ml/kg of 0.2% of Ropivacaine by
caudal block produces a maximal plasma concentration of 0.7224mg/L, which is much lower than the maximal tolerated plasma concentration of Ropivacaine in adult volunteers (2.20.8mg/L).
DISCUSSION: We conducted this prospective randomised study in an attempt to assess whether administration of clonidine 1 ug/kg to commonly administered bupivacaine for
caudal block in children undergoing infra umbilical surgeries quality and duration of pain in the post-operative period.
Single shot
caudal block with bupivacaine is the most commonly used regional technique for intra operative and postoperative pain relief in children.
In our study we have excluded the patient who had local infection at the site of injection, coagulation disorders, sacrovertebral anomaly we have given
caudal block in 50 patients and found that failure rate of
caudal block was nil.