Duration of spinal anaesthesia is determined by the partition coefficient of local anaesthetic

L. Langerman*, E. Golomb, G. J. Grant, S. Benita

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

We have compared the duration of motor block produced by four local anaesthetics administered into a chronically implanted subarachnoid catheter in rabbits. Each group (n = 6) received four different doses of amethocaine, bupivacaine, lignocaine or procaine, and the duration of the resulting motor block was assessed. Dose-response curves were plotted for each drug. As a measure of activity of the anaesthetics, we used the dose of each drug required to produce block of 60-min duration (D60min) and the correlation between D60min and different drug properties was examined. An inverse linear correlation (r = 0.995; P < 0.01) was observed between log D60min and the log of the partition coefficient of the local anaesthetics. No correlation was found between the effect and degree of protein binding, pKa or molecular weight. These results suggest that, in spinal anaesthesia, the partition coefficient could be used as a predictor of the duration of anaesthetic action. (Br. J. Anaesth. 1994; 72: 456-459)

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)456-459
Number of pages4
JournalBritish Journal of Anaesthesia
Volume72
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 1994

Keywords

  • Anaesthetic techniques: subarachnoid
  • Anaesthetics, local arnethocaine
  • Anaesthetics, local bupivacaine
  • Anaesthetics, local: lignocaine
  • Anaesthetics, local: procaine

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