Conditions: Spinal Anesthesia Cesarean Section
Keywords: spinal anesthesia epinephrine bupivacaine repeat cesarean
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 68
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the addition of a medication called epinephrine to spinal medications prolongs the duration of the anesthesia. The medication standardly used in spinal anesthesia is a local anesthetic (bupivacaine) and an opiate pain medication (morphine). These medications typically last about 2 hours. The investigators want to determine if adding epinephrine to the spinal medications prolongs the anesthetic without side effects. A longer duration of anesthesia may be useful in prolonged repeat cesarean section. Epinephrine is known to prolong the action of some local anesthetics, but the investigators want to specifically study combining it with the medications the investigators use regularly for cesarean section.

You may qualify to take part in this research study because you are having a repeat cesarean section. Repeat cesarean sections sometimes last longer than 2 hours. The investigators want to determine if epinephrine will prolong the anesthetic.

Detailed description:
Spinal anesthesia with bupivacaine is a commonly used anesthetic in the obstetric population. It is most frequently carried out as a single shot intrathecal injection. This method can be utilized for both labor analgesia and surgical anesthesia for cesarean section. One of the concerns in using a single shot spinal injection for surgical anesthesia is the duration of adequate surgical conditions. This concern is especially relevant to repeat cesarean sections, as each subsequent procedure has the potential to be more complex than the prior and, therefore, prolonged. A reliable way to prolong surgical anesthesia provided by single shot spinal injection of bupivacaine could prove invaluable in the setting of repeat cesarean section. It has been well documented that adding epinephrine to intrathecal lidocaine will increase its duration1, but the evidence for augmenting the duration of anesthesia provided by adding epinephrine to bupivacaine is much more equivocal and less robust. This is a randomized control trial investigating whether or not adding epinephrine to a standard single intrathecal injection of hyperbaric bupivacaine for repeat cesarean will prolong its duration. It will be investigated using women who are undergoing scheduled repeat cesarean section in whom neuraxial anesthesia is the appropriate primary anesthetic. The investigators will compare the onset, quality and duration of both sensory and motor components of the spinal block as well as the incidence of known side effects.

Arms:
arm 1: 100micrograms of epinephrine group arm 2: 200micrograms of epinephrine group arm 3: 0.2ml saline

Interventions: intervention 1: Low-dose epinephrine intervention 2: High-dose epinephrine intervention 3: No epinephrine
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 0.1ml of preservative-free saline and 0.1ml of 1:1000 epinephrine will be added to the standard spinal medications intervention 2: 0.2ml of 1:1000 epinephrine will be added to the standard spinal medications intervention 3: 0.2ml of preservative-free saline will be added to the standard spinal medications

Protocol document: