Local anaesthesia in dogs and cats.

摘要

Local anaesthetic technique is well known and used for intraoperative and postoperative analgesia. It can also be used for chronic pain therapy in veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, these techniques are often forgotten in daily veterinary practice. Adverse drug reactions and other complications are rarely seen when drugs are correctly applied. The classic way of action for local anaesthetics is a reversible inhibition of nerve function. This leads to loss of sensation, analgesia, and inhibition of the active mobility in anaesthetized body regions. In contrast to human medicine, at least sedation is necessary to administer local anaesthetics in veterinary medicine. Usually this also reduces the anaesthetic risk. In addition to the traditional application of local anaesthetics, analgesics like opioids are increasingly used. In some of these substances, the effect lasts up to 24 h so that they can also be used for postoperative pain therapy. This review article describes the mechanism of action of local anaesthetics and analgesics. Furthermore, selected local anaesthetic and analgesic techniques are characterized. When a topical anaesthetic technique is used, it must be kept in mind that it can take up to five minutes before an effect is observed depending on the local anaesthetic administered. In addition to the technique of infiltration anaesthesia and peripheral nerve block, epidural anaesthesia plays a major role among local anaesthesia techniques currently used in dogs and cats.