To be successful with Regional Anesthesia, preparation is key. That means preparing the operator with knowledge of anatomy and technical skills, preparing the patient with positioning sedation, etc., and setting up the equipment. This section deals with the latter.
High-Yield Blocks
There are a number of blocks, which, if we can do them, and we can do them well, every single situation in regular Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Medicine can be managed. These blocks are known as High-Yield Blocks – blocks that gives us high success rates with minimal problems and complications.
Other Acute Pain Blocks
Apart from the essential High-Yield Blocks, practitioners are of course from time to time required to do a host of other nerve blocks. Most of these are featured here and the majority are “borrowed” from other athors outside of the RAEducation.com Group. These techniques have, however, all been approved by the Editorial Board of RAEducation.com.
Chronic Pain Blocks
There are a number of blocks that classify as “Chronic Pain Blocks”, but in many cases the boundaries between “Acute Pain”, “Chronic Pain” and “Cancer Pain” are fuzzy and these blocks and related topics are included here for the benefit of practitioners and patients who view Pain as Pain – whatever its disposition.
Nerve-stimulator-guided Nerve Blocks
In the era before ultrasound, nerve stimulation techniques were widely and exclusively used for single-injection and continuous nerve block. Ultrasound has mostly replaced nerve stimulation for single injection nerve blocks, but there are situations where ultrasound is not available and there are practitioners who prefer to use nerve stimulation. The editorial board is of strong opinion that the “dual technique” of placing the needle with ultrasound and then the cathjeter for continuous peripheral nerve block (CPNB) with nerve stimulation is the only technique that will consistently place the catheter tip in the sub-circumneural space (See microanatomy section) and thus prevent the unacceptably high prevalence of secondary block failure with ultrasound-only placement of catheters for CPNB.
Vintage Education Videos
The late Daniel (Danny) Moore can rightfully be described as one of the founders of Regional Anesthesia. His visionary work has far reaching implications, and RAEducation is proud to bring to Members this valuable and unique collection of nerve block videos made by Danny himself in the 1970, and narrated by the great man himself. He had to go to the Netherlands to make these videos, because (his words) “In those days we did not have the technology available in the USA to make teaching videos”.