Regional Anaesthesia

Perineural catheter placement is an important postoperative pain therapy standard in our clinic. The most modern local anaesthetics are used to perform high-quality regional anaesthesia. Clinical research here focuses on:

• The optimisation of drug doses / concentrations, drug combinations and patient’s safety
• The combination of different regional anaesthesia techniques to optimise postoperative analgesia
• The development and improvement of nerve block’s quality (anatomy studies, pharmacokinetic studies)
• Development of regional anaesthesia techniques and pain therapy concepts for postoperative children care
• Support of the minimal invasive surgical techniques by adapting the anaesthesiology and pain therapy approaches to optimise patient’s hospitalisation duration and thereby reducing costs

Infraclavicular block with the vertical approach (top) and its modification by Prof. A. Borgeat (bottom)

Ongoing Projects:

• Optimisation of neurostimulation-guided regional anaesthesia techniques for paediatric anaesthesia
  
• Onset, development, duration of perineural blocks depending on the stimulated roots
  
  The brachial plexus. Different stimulation sites and consecutive motor response will determine the block quality.
  3^rd prize for the best free paper presentation at the ESRA Congress 2007: Improved success rate of the interscalene catheter with deltoid / proximal triceps response. J. Aguirre, S. Blumenthal, A. Borgeat
   
• The role of thermography for regional anaesthesia
  
• Neurostimulation / ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia: is there really a clinically relevant difference?