Cervical cerclage and anaesthesia - Regional or General: Which is better?

Background: Cervical incompetence is the most common cause of second trimester spontaneous abortions and preterm labour4. Cervical cerclage is usually performed in such patients to prevent this sequelae. In our study, the cervical cerclage procedure was done under general and regional anaesthesia3 in order to find out the most suitable anaesthetic technique for this procedure. Methods: In our study 70 patients were studied. They were randomly divided into 2 groups of 35 patients each. The efficacy of general anaesthesia and regional anaesthesia were studied. Results: All the patients receiving general anaesthesia required sedation essentially and more post-operative analgesia(42.86%) compared to the regional anaesthesia group(5.71%). 25.71% of patients had postoperative nausea in the G group compared to 2.86% of the patients in R group. The surgical time was approximately the same in all the patients. Even though the anaesthesia time and the recovery room stay was more in the R group, this statistically significant difference was not of much clinical importance. The hospital stay was the same in both the groups and was statistically insignificant(p 0.22). Conclusion: Both general and regional anaesthesia can be safely used for the performance of cervical encirclage procedure without any significant complication.