ArticleAnaesthesia2025
Regional anaesthesia for awake urgent upper limb surgery in children: a prospective cohort study.
Article in Anaesthesia, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionPeripheral regional anaesthesia is used rarely as the sole anaesthetic technique in children and is often combined with deep sedation or general anaesthesia for analgesic purposes. No literature addresses the minimum age at which regional anaesthesia can be considered to facilitate awake surgery in children. We hypothesised that children of school age could undergo awake urgent upper limb surgery with regional anaesthesia supported by anxiety-reduction strategies.
methodsWe recruited children aged 6-12 y who required urgent upper limb surgery. Peripheral regional anaesthesia with 0.35% ropivacaine was administered with ultrasound guidance and without neurostimulation. To reduce anxiety, patients watched cartoons on touchscreen tablets throughout the procedure. Sedatives or general anaesthesia were administered only if necessary. Anxiety was assessed during regional anaesthesia and surgery using the short form of the Modified Yale Pre-operative Anxiety Scale. Behavioural changes were evaluated on postoperative day 14 using the post-hospitalisation behaviour questionnaire.
resultsOf the 99 patients studied, 81 (82%) underwent successful awake surgery with peripheral regional anaesthesia. The success rate increased with age, from 12 (67%) in 6-year-olds to 10 (100%) in 12-year-olds. No serious adverse events or significant behavioural disturbances were observed at 2-week follow-up. The staff ratings showed low difficulty ratings in the regional anaesthesia alone group, apart from during catheter insertion in two patients. The administration of peripheral regional anaesthesia was rated to be difficult for six (41%) of the patients in the regional anaesthesia with sedation and/or general anaesthesia subgroup. DISCUSSION: Using regional anaesthesia to facilitate awake surgery is feasible in children of school age undergoing urgent upper limb surgery. Further investigations are needed to compare regional anaesthesia with general anaesthesia in this context.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.