Lower Extremity Surgery with the Patient Under Spinal Anesthesia: Cardiac Arrest

Abstract

We present herein the case of an 87-year-old male undergoing surgery for traumatic fracture of the femur in whom severe bradycardia and cardiac arrest developed after spinal anesthesia. Dopamine infusion started after resuscitation was stopped in the 3rd hour. A relationship was seen between this process and intrathecal application and development of bradycardia. However, this relationship represents only one of the cardiac arrest etiologies. With this case study, we aimed to question all possible causes to determine if the development of cardiac arrest following spinal anesthesia was coincidental or a remarkable phenomenon, since the operation performed under general anesthesia 15 days later was uneventful.