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Minerva Anestesiologica 2013 November;79(11):1281-90

Copyright © 2013 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Regional anesthesia in patients with significant comorbid disease

Stundner O. ¹, Danninger T. ^{1, 2}, Memtsoudis S. G. ² ✉

¹ Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine and Intensive Care Medicine, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria; ² Department of Anesthesiology, Hospital for Special Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA

An increasing body of evidence suggests that regional anesthesia does not only provide better pain control compared to systemic analgesic and anesthetic techniques but that it is associated with improved perioperative outcomes. As these benefits may be especially prominent in the patient population suffering from high comorbidity burden, anesthesiologists have to be familiar with associated factors that may complicate the decision to use regional anesthetics. This manuscript is intended to provide a brief overview of the recent literature regarding beneficial outcomes associated with the use of regional versus general anesthesia, before focusing on the discussion of the implications of specific comorbid states on the performance of regional anesthetic techniques.