Obasuyi BI, Alagbe-Briggs OT, Echem RC
Most orthopaedic surgeries involve the extremities and there is a rising trend in the use of regional techniques for them. Skilful and appropriate applic ation of these broadens the anaesthetist's range of options, provides optimal anaesthetic care which in cludes postoperative analgesia and improves patient satisfaction. This study was to retrospecti vely review the types of anaesthesia and their appropriateness for extremity surgeries in the orth opaedic unit of a tertiary hospital. This will also provide a reference for future studies. The surgica l records of the orthopaedic surgical unit were reviewed over a period of 1year. Paediatric patient s (<18years) and those with incomplete data were excluded from the study. Patients’ demographic data , extremity and location of where surgery was performed, duration of surgery and type of anaesthe sia were recorded. Data was analysed and presented as frequencies and means using the SPSS v ersion 16 software. A total of 145 patients with a mean age of 37.4 ± 15.0 years and male to female ra tio of 2:1 were studied. Procedures were 49 (33.8%) upper limb and 96 (66.2%) lower limb surgeries. In the upper limb, 41(83.7%) were conducted under general anaesthesia while 8(16.3%) were done under regional/local anaesthesia. In the lower limb, 79 (82.3%) were done under spinal anaesthesia, 12 (12. 5%) under general anaesthesia and 5 (5.2%) were done using other forms of regional/localanaesthesia . Therefore general anaesthesia was used for most upper limb surgeries, while spinal anaesthesia was predominantly used for lower limb surgeries. Peripheral nerve blocks were not offered. Current a pproaches in regional anaesthetic techniques should be encouraged.
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