Regional Anesthesia

If your surgery is in an arm, a leg or below the waist, our experts may suggest a regional anesthesia that numbs only one portion of your body.

If your surgery is in an extremity or below the waist, our anesthesia experts may suggest a regional anesthesia such as a spinal or epidural. Once the medicine takes effect, you will be numb from your waist down, but still conscious during the surgery. A third type of regional anesthesia that we use to target specific areas is a nerve block.

Spinal anesthesia is used for surgeries like joint replacement and hernia repair. It temporarily blocks nerve signals to and from the lower part of the body. First, our nurse anesthetist or anesthesiologist gives you a local anesthetic in the lower back to numb the injection site. Then a thin needle delivers pain-relieving medication into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord.

Epidural anesthesia, a popular choice during childbirth, is similar to spinal anesthesia, except that it’s delivered into the “epidural” space (just outside the spinal cord). The advantage to epidural anesthesia is that the anesthesia team can insert a thin tube or catheter to provide pain relief after the operation. Plus, we have a special anesthesia group that meets with mothers-to-be every day.

To block pain caused by a specific nerve, our anesthesia experts usually use nerve blocks. The medicine is injected around one specific nerve or cluster of nerves. Nerve blocks are often used for pain management, before knee and hip replacement procedures and sometimes as the main anesthetic for hand, arm or foot surgery.

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