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This digital document is an article from Gale Encyclopedia of Surgery, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses. The length of the article is 1257 words. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Written by experts in the field, this encyclopedia covers surgical procedures and related topics, such as anesthetics, medications, and postoperative care. Entries include definition, purpose, demographic information, diagnosis/preparation, aftercare, risks, morbidity, and mortality rates, alternatives, and more.
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An epidural is a local (regional) anesthetic delivered through a catheter (small tube) into a vacant space outside the spinal cord called the epidural space. The drugs commonly used in epidural anesthesia are bupivicaine (Marcaine, Sensorcaine); chloroprocaine (Nesacaine); and lidocaine (Xylocaine). The solutions of anesthetic should be preservative-free. The anesthetic agents that are infused through the small catheter block spinal nerve roots in the epidural space and the sympathetic nerve fibers adjacent to them. Epidural anesthesia can block most of the pain of labor and birth for vaginal and surgical deliveries....
