Continuous peripheral block in foot surgery

Abstract

Peripheral neural blockade techniques are commonly used procedures to provide perioperative anesthesia and analgesia. Several continuous infusion catheter techniques have been described to extend the use of peripheral neural blockade into the postoperative period as an effective method of providing pain management. The analgesic benefit of continuous local anesthetic peripheral block in the management of postoperative pain is primarily related to the properties of providing intense analgesia thereby reducing perioperative opioid requirements and opioid-related side effects and promoting early recovery of postoperative activity. Continuous peripheral nerve blockade seems to be effective in allowing major foot and ankle surgery to be done particularly on an outpatient basis with greater pain relief. The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body and it lies deep in the posterior thigh. According to its anatomy, the sciatic nerve can then be reached at different levels from the parasacral space to the popliteal fossa, ideally identifying a sciatic line running from the inferior border of the gluteus maximus muscle between the greater throcanter and the ischiatic tuberosity to the popliteal fossa. A variety of continuous peripheral blocks have been described in this paper including continuous sciatic block at several levels (para-sacral nerve block, subgluteal sciatic nerve block) and popliteal nerve block.