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- The very essence of what it means to be a physician
is to relieve pain
and regional anesthesia fits well into that philosophy
because it is a way that relieves pain,
at the same, it minimizes the impact
of treatment of that pain.
- Regional anesthesiology is the delivery
of local anesthetic around nerves that supply
the area that's gonna everybody affected by surgery.
- They'll use ultrasound and they'll identify
the individual nerve and inject the numbing medicine
right around the nerve,
so that it can be very, very specific
for the area that they want to numb.
- [Dr. Thomas] Ultrasound is a game changer in medicine.
Ultrasound enables the proceduralist
to visualize what's going on on the inside
by just placing a probe over the area
that we want to go to.
Being able to see precisely where you're going
in with their needle and delivering the medication
is the advantage of an ultrasound.
- There really is no limit to how it can be applied,
but it can be as complicated
as when I do chest wall reconstructions,
that what we'll do is put catheters to supply each
of the nerves of the chest wall with numbing medicine
so that you can come out of the operating room
without discomfort and not have to have high doses
of narcotics through the vein
or things by mouth that could cause stomach irritation.
- [Dr. Thomas] There are many patients who get regional anesthesiology
and require no opioids,
and then there's some patients who do require some opioids,
but it's significantly less than what you required before.
And good evidence based medicine
shows us that using what we call
a multi-modal approach, minimizing drugs
that will cause a patient side effects,
but giving them the best pain control as possible
is better for the patient.
- I think the important thing for patients
to think about is that they have a role
in their post-operative recovery
and I think it's actually very important
for them to ask about the strategies
that we're gonna provide to reduce their pain.