Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management (Jul 2016)

Comparison of continuous epidural infusion and programmed intermittent epidural bolus in labor analgesia

  • Lin Y,
  • Li Q,
  • Liu J,
  • Yang R,
  • Liu J

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2016, no. Issue 1
pp. 1107 – 1112

Abstract

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Yunan Lin, Qiang Li, Jinlu Liu, Ruimin Yang, Jingchen Liu Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi, People’s Republic of China Background: This study aims to investigate differences between continuous epidural infusion (CEI) and programmed intermittent epidural bolus (IEB) analgesia for the Chinese parturients undergoing spontaneous delivery and to approach their safety to parturients and neonates.Methods: Two hundred healthy American Society of Anesthesiologists class I or II, term (≥37 weeks’ gestation), nulliparous women who requested analgesia for labor were recruited. Epidural analgesia was initiated with a solution of 0.15% ropivacaine 10 mL and maintained with 0.1% ropivacaine mixed with sufentanil 0.3 µg/mL by CEI at a rate of 5 mL/h combined with a patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) bolus of 5 mL of ropivacaine sufentanil mixture or IEB of 5 mL of ropivacaine sufentanil mixture combined with a PCEA bolus of 5 mL of ropivacaine sufentanil mixture. The lockout interval was 20 minutes in each arm between the CEI and the IEB group. After 20 minutes of first dosage, visual analog scale (VAS) score was obtained every 60 minutes. The maternal and fetal outcome and total consumption of analgesic solution were compared.Results: There was no difference in demographic characteristics, duration of first and second stages, delivery methods, sensory block, fetal Apgar scores, and the maternal outcomes between the CEI and IEB groups. There was a significant difference in VAS scores and epidural ropivacaine total consumption between the two groups (IEB vs CEI: 51.27±9.61 vs 70.44±12.78 mg, P<0.01). Conclusion: The use of programmed IEB mixed with PCEA improved labor analgesia compared to CEI mixed with PCEA, which could act as maintenance mode for epidural labor analgesia. Keywords: intermittent epidural bolus, continuous epidural infusion, labor analgesia, patient-controlled epidural analgesia

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