Abstract
Increased blood levels of catecholamines have been documented to both decrease uterine blood flow compromising fetal homeostasis and to prolong labor by decreasing uterine contractions. These authors demonstrated that effective analgesia produced by epidural block during labor lowered maternal blood levels of epinephrine by 56 per cent. It has been shown in the past, that the stress of labor is also associated with increased maternal cardiac output, maternal hyperventilation, increased maternal oxygen consumption, maternal hypoxemia, and both maternal and fetal metabolic acidosis. All of these undesirable conditions are significantly decreased by epidural analgesia. Thus, epidural block is often indicated not only from a humanitarian standpoint to reduce the physical suffering of parturition, but even more important to protect both mother and fetus from the associated stress of labor. This protection may be extremely desirable in the high-risk pregnancy where maternal and/or fetal reserves are severely limited.
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