Pain relief for safe spinal anesthesia

Exhausted after 2 days of labor, Ms. Hang Nga (Cau Giay, Hanoi) felt that she could not continue to suffer so she recommended the doctor for pain relief. Just a few hours later, she gently gave birth to a baby girl and did not suffer from postpartum pain.

(Photo: imagesource) Russia suffered nearly 2 days when the cervix just opened 3 cm, while her strength was nearly exhausted. The prolonged labor has lost Russia all its strength. Hearing the doctor's advice, she agreed to receive pain relief by spinal anesthesia. After being injected with the medicine, she ran out of pain. Birth takes place quickly and easily. She also does not have to suffer pain when suturing the perineum and postpartum pain.

Russia is one of the patients who have been applied spinal anesthesia to relieve pain at birth in Central Obstetrics Hospital. It is scary to inject drugs into the spinal cord; However, according to Dr. Tran Dinh Tu, Head of Anesthesia Resuscitation Department, this technique is very safe, even less catastrophic than epidural anesthesia (a common method of pain relief at birth).

In this method, the doctor will give a single dose of a very low dose of Bupivacaine anesthetic, combined with a central analgesic for intervertebral intercourse L2-L3 or L3-L4. This is the only area with cerebrospinal fluid, while the spinal cord is above, so there is no fear of needle causing marrow injury. After that, the woman is given oxytocin to regulate uterine contractions, making birth easier. In the process of waiting for birth, women still go back to normal.

Mr. Tu said, compared to the classic pain relief method is epidural anesthesia, spinal anesthesia has the same analgesic effect and more advantages.

The required epidural anesthesia is performed by highly qualified doctors, currently only performed in large hospitals. Kim used in this technique is quite large, so if you accidentally puncture the dura, the cerebrospinal fluid will go out when withdrawing the needle, causing a headache (the rate of this symptom is up to 80%). If the doctor does not know whether a pleural hole is punctured and still injects the drug, a high dose of medication will endanger the woman, even leading to death. On the other hand, this method must use a catheter to deliver the drug so there is a risk of catheter rupture.

In spinal anesthesia, patients do not have these risks. The only downside is that if the patient needs surgery afterwards, the injection must be repeated (if the epidural is an epidural, just add the medicine to the catheter).

According to Dr. Tu, this method is very suitable for the conditions of Vietnam because of safety (after 5 years of implementation, there are no cases of complications), easy to do, provincial doctors can do it. This is also less expensive (only about 30-40 thousand VND, compared to 200,000 VND in epidural anesthesia).

Dr. Tu said that, in addition to the above two methods, women can also reduce pain at birth by injecting drugs into a vein, but this way is not effective.

Thanh Nhan