In current prospective randomized double-blinded clinical trial, 230 pregnant women candidate for cesarean section, with grade I or II of American society of anesthesiology (ASA), will be enrolled. Patients with contraindications for epidural analgesia, diabetes and mental disorders excluded.
Standard monitoring including non-invasive blood pressure, heart rate, pulse oximetry and electrocardiogram performed in all patients. Epidural analgesia provided using 25G Quincke needle in sitting position, between L3-L4 or L4-L5 intervertebral space. Subsequent to online randomization, patients randomly underwent 10 mg bupivacaine injection combined with 20 mg fentanyl. Study group (115) received isobaric 0.5% bupivacaine and control group (115) received hyperbaric bupivacaine.
Vital signs measured regularly, during operation. Patients’ demographic data, history of epidural analgesia, operation duration and analgesia duration (length of intrathecal injection till recurrence of the sensory blockage under T12 dermatome), amount of intravenous infusion, postoperative complication and subsequent treatments recorded. During 6 to 48 hours postoperative, patients evaluated in terms of transient neurologic syndrome (TNS) symptoms, symptoms onset and duration of symptoms after analgesia recovery, pain severity according to visual analogue scale (VAS) for pain (0 for painless and 10 for intolerable pain), treatment type and dosage of analgesics used to treat symptoms and final outcomes.