A prospective, randomized comparison between single- and multiple-injection techniques for ultrasound-guided subgluteal sciatic nerve block

摘要

BACKGROUND: It is believed that local anesthetic injected to obtain circumferential spread around nerves produces a more rapid onset and successful blockade after some ultrasoundguided peripheral nerve blocks. However, evidence demonstrating this point is limited only to the popliteal sciatic nerve block, which is relatively easy to perform by via a high-frequency linear transducer. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that multiple injections of local anesthetic to make circumferential spread would improve the rate of sensory and motor blocks compared with a single-injection technique for ultrasound-guided subgluteal sciatic nerve block, which is considered a relatively difficult block conducted with a low-frequency, curved-array transducer.