Abstract
This review aims to report an update on drugs administered into the epidural space for anesthesia and analgesia in dogs, describing their potential advantages and disadvantages in the clinical setting. Databases searched include Pubmed, Google scholar, and CAB abstracts. Benefits of administering local anesthetics, opioids, and alpha2 agonists into the epidural space include the use of lower doses of general anesthetics (anesthetic “sparing” effect), perioperative analgesia, and reduced side effects associated with systemic administration of drugs. However, the potential for cardiorespiratory compromise, neurotoxicity, and other adverse effects should be considered when using the epidural route of administration. When these variables are considered, the epidural technique is useful as a complementary method of anesthesia for preventive and postoperative analgesia and/or as part of a balanced anesthesia technique.
Highlights
Epidural administration of drugs for pain management has been widely used in veterinary medicine [1,2,3]
This review reports potential advantages and disadvantages of each class of drugs and their combinations used for epidural anesthesia and analgesia in dogs
A larger volume (0.31 mL kg−1) is required to anesthetize up to the eleventh thoracic vertebra [59] but this volume may not be recommended for clinical use because sympathetic blockade followed by hypotension may result especially during the combine used of epidural anesthesia with inhalational anesthetics
Summary
Epidural administration of drugs for pain management has been widely used in veterinary medicine [1,2,3]. Epidural administration of local anesthetics can be effective for a variety of surgical procedures such as cesarean section [22], orthopedic procedures in the hind limb, and soft tissue surgeries [8, 23]. In these cases, minimal maternal and fetal depression [22] and less cardiopulmonary depression than general anesthesia [23] have been observed. The epidural technique per se is not the main focus of this article and has been reported elsewhere [10, 27]
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