Abstract

Spinal Anaesthesia is the preferred choice of anaesthesia for caesarean sections. It avoids the risks associated with general anaesthesia like the risk of aspiration, incidence of difficult airway etc. However it is not without problems. At present a variety of dosage regimens are employed irrespective of patient characteristics. This may result in unwarranted hypotension in some cases due to overdosing and inadequate anaesthesia in some other cases due to under dosing. In this study we compared two dosage regimens for spinal anaesthesia for elective caesarean sections. One was the fixed dosage regimen and the other one, an adjusted dosage regimen based on the patient’s height and weight. It was found that the adjusted dosage regimen significantly reduced the incidence of side effects due to overdosing like hypotension without compromising on the efficacy of intraoperative anaesthesia

Keywords: Spinal Anaesthesia, Caesarean Sections, Bupivacaine.