Spinal anaesthesia for caesarean delivery.

Abstract

LTHOUGH the use of subarachnoid blockade in obA stetrics was described only few years after the first report of spinal anaesthesia by Bier 1899 (1) it is not until the last 5-10 years that spinal anaesthesia has become the most frequently used anaesthetic method for caesarean section at our hospital. Currently around 750 caesarean sections are performed annually at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Karolinska Hospital. Around 40% of them are being performed electively and in more than 90% of these cases spinal anaesthesia is employed as the sole anaesthetic method. In the remaining non-scheduled caesarean deliveries, spinal anaesthesia is currently used in at least 60-70 YO of all cases. The reasons for the rapid increase in the use of spinal anaesthesia for caesarean section are manifold and will be discussed below.