Plastic and reconstructive surgery
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Plast. Reconstr. Surg. · Aug 2006
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyRandomized double-blind comparison of duration of anesthesia among three commonly used agents in digital nerve block.
Three local anesthetics are commonly used for digital nerve block: 2% lidocaine with 1:100,000 epinephrine, 2% lidocaine, and 0.5% bupivacaine. The authors have not identified a study that has compared these three agents in digital nerve block in a randomized fashion. The goal of this study was to determine which of the three agents provided the longest duration of digital nerve blockade. ⋯ At an average of 24.9 hours, bupivacaine (0.5%) provides a significantly longer digital anesthesia time than the average 10.4 hours achieved by 2% lidocaine with epinephrine (1:100,000), which in turn provides twice as long an anesthesia time as 2% lidocaine (average, 4.9 hours).