Ultrasound-guided Sciatic Nerve Block in Overweight and Obese Patients

Abstract

The subgluteal space technique may be performed 50% faster, with no detectable differences in block success and analgesic efficacy, compared with the infragluteal technique for US-guided SNB in overweight and obese patients receiving multimodal analgesia. Injection of local anesthetics along tissue planes may produce similar block characteristics to perineural injection for US-guided SNB.

Lower extremity regional anesthesia: essentials of our current understanding

“…Although the circumferential group required a longer performance time, it resulted in higher proportions of patients with complete sensory block at 30 min (41.9% vs 16.3%; p=0.018). In the second trial (n=27), in patients with body mass indices >25 kg/m 2 , Abdallah et al 178 compared US-guided subgluteal sciatic nerve blocks (with perineural LA injection) to US-guided LA injection in the subgluteal space (ie, the intermuscular fascial plane between the gluteus maximus and quadratus femoris muscles). Despite similar success rates, these authors found that the subgluteal space technique resulted in a shorter performance time (4.4 vs 9.0 min; p<0.001) as well as fewer needle passes and less procedural pain.…”