Day surgery regional anesthesia in children: safety and improving outcomes, do they make a difference?
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this review is to provide an overview of recent developments in pediatric regional anesthesia and elucidate outcomes as it relates to patient safety and overall satisfaction.


RESULTS
Since the inception of the Pediatric Regional Anesthesia Network database, the acquisition of data has enabled the pediatric anesthesiologist to extrapolate results and translate them into useful outcomes. Despite the growing trend to provide regional anesthesia in the pediatric population, there continues to be a paucity of available research studies to evaluate outcomes of various regional nerve blocks. This review serves as a conduit to explore the most recent data available, in each regional anesthetic technique, as it relates to outcomes such as analgesia, patient safety and satisfaction.


CONCLUSIONS
Despite the limited number of randomized controlled trials evaluating the safety of individual regional anesthetic techniques, the growing body of data, such as presented in the Pediatric Regional Anesthesia Network database, suggests a high degree of safety in performing various regional anesthetic modalities. Modern medicine should continue to embrace the use of regional anesthesia, particularly in the ambulatory setting, to reduce perioperative pain and improve patient outcomes.
Department of Pediatric Anesthesia, Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Jeremy D
JD
Deer
Amod
A
Sawardekar
Santhanam
S
Suresh
D000556:Ambulatory Surgical Procedures; D000698:Analgesia / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D000765:Anesthesia, Conduction / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D002648:Child; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D010149:Postoperative Pain / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000453:epidemiology; D061214:Patient Safety; D015995:Prevalence; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D016896:Treatment Outcome