Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
The most recent articles from:
Reg Anesth Pain Med
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Sep 2013
Estimating the incidence of suspected epidural hematoma and the hidden imaging cost of epidural catheterization: a retrospective review of 43,200 cases.
Hematoma associated with epidural catheterization is rare, but the diagnosis might be suspected relatively frequently. We sought to estimate the incidence of suspected epidural hematoma after epidural catheterization and to determine the associated cost of excluding or diagnosing an epidural hematoma through radiologic imaging. ⋯ Approximately 1 in 430 patients undergoing epidural catheterization will be suspected to have an epidural hematoma. The cost of excluding the diagnosis, when suspected, is relatively low when allocated across all patients undergoing epidural catheterization.