Anesthesia Essay

After surgery, patients in the general and spinal anesthesia group received opioids for postoperative pain and patients with epidurals received continuous infusions of hydromorphone and bupivacaine for 24 to 120 hours postoperatively (Ong, Arneja, & Ong, 2005).
They found that patients who received epidural and spinal anesthesia had a significant decrease in pain in the first week after surgery compared to those who received general anesthesia. However, there was no difference in the use of opioid analgesic, non-opioid analgesic, gabapentin or amitrypitaline between groups. Similarly, there was no difference in stump pain, phantom limb pain, sensation between the groups immediately postoperatively or at fourteen months follow up. These findings were similar to other studies done by Nikolajsen et al and Bach et al. While there may be a benefit of using epidural and spinal anesthesia in the immediate postoperative period, more studies must be done to determine the long-term benefit of decreasing phantom limb pain and sensation. (Ong et al., 2005).
The findings by Ong et al. (2005) are similar to the findings in the study done by Sahin et al. (2011). Ninety-two patients were followed for 24 months in this retrospective study after they
This is similar to the results found by Karanikolas et al., (2011) who found that the use of spinal and epidural anesthesia to prevent phantom limb pain has had conflicting results. However, the use of regional anesthesia for prevention of phantom limb pain and sensation has increased due to the increase safety due to the development and accessibility to ultrasound (Karanikolas et al.,