Responsibilities and obligations of epidural anesthesia

The wind is whistling and the Yishui River is cold. The warriors will never come back. From: "Yishui Song" also known as "Crossing Yishui Song". It means that the wind is whistling and the Yishui River is cold. The warriors are going far away and will not return until they complete their mission! The tragic oath reveals the responsibility and commitment of the soldiers.

Hello everyone, I am your old friend, the anesthesiologist. Follow me and I will explain everything about surgical anesthesia to you from a first-hand perspective.

Today, what we are going to tell you is not a person, but a method of anesthesia.

Some friends are curious: What is there to talk about a method of anesthesia?

This is because, after years of working in clinical anesthesia and ensuring the safety of surgical patients, these techniques are no longer just techniques, but have long become our anesthesiologists’ closest comrades-in-arms!

With the development of the times and the advancement of medicine, many medical technologies have to withdraw from the stage of history. Even if it is your beloved "AK47", you will not hesitate to replace it in front of advanced equipment.

In anesthesia technology, we have gradually moved from the era of "nothing can be solved without partial anesthesia below the neck" to the era of "general anesthesia for all surgeries, big or small".

There are many reasons for this: the iteration of technological advantages, the demand for comfortable medical care, and even the influence of economic factors.

However, as an old anesthesiologist, I believe that epidural anesthesia, which once played a leading role in that era, still has important responsibilities and obligations.

Friends who have just come in may not know what epidural anesthesia is.

Let us explain briefly: Epidural anesthesia is a type of spinal anesthesia. The operation method is to puncture the spine of the patient on the back. The effect is that the peripheral nerves innervated by multiple spinal cord segments centered on the puncture point temporarily lose pain and even mobility. In most cases, there is no pain in the surgical site and both lower limbs. Therefore, it is also figuratively called "half anesthesia".

Some people may say, since the current trend is unstoppable, why do you still cling to it?

Now, let me explain in detail:

First of all, epidural anesthesia has a definite effect on blocking nerve conduction. For experts, the problem of "being able to drink and take anesthetics" that patients worry about can be completely ignored. Whether it is a 200-pound fat man or a muscular strong man, there is nothing that a local anesthetic cannot solve.

Secondly, epidural anesthesia is the responsibility of anesthesiologists to pass on their skills. With the development of general anesthesia technology, perhaps many years from now, no young anesthesiologist will be able to perform epidural anesthesia. So, let me ask: Can an anesthesiologist who cannot perform epidural anesthesia still be called an excellent anesthesiologist?

Thirdly, in the concept of rapid recovery after surgery (ERAS), epidural analgesia is an important component of multimodal analgesia. Its advantages cannot be replaced for some time.

Finally, epidural anesthesia is taking on the important task of labor analgesia. Even some countries that boast of their highly developed medical care still use epidural anesthesia as the main technology for labor analgesia and childbirth anesthesia. It can be seen that the technology itself cannot be replaced.

In the future, as the country vigorously promotes painless analgesia and the opening of third-birth technology, epidural technology will be revitalized again.

As an anesthesiologist, especially a young anesthesiologist, you must pick up basic techniques and master basic skills as soon as possible to meet challenges.

I would like to share this article with you and hope that we can work together to help the young doctors around us, build a good talent team, and shoulder the burden of perioperative management together!