Long-Term Follow-Up of Patients Who Received 10,098 Spinal Anesthetics

In anesthesiology there is a continuing healthy criticism of the agents and techniques used to achieve practical and safe conditions for surgical operations. This criticism arises both from within the ranks of the specialty and from outside. Hardly a drug or method is free of major disadvantages. Recent reports have described what seems to be an increasing incidence of cardiac arrest under anesthesia.1General anesthesia and particularly the employment of multiple agents have been blamed in part for this increased mortality. We hear that ether is not the safe agent it once was thought to be2and that curare may possess an inherent toxicity.3Spinal anesthesia, an anesthetic technique with great advantages for the patient, surgeon, and anesthetist, is relatively free from the criticism of toxicity and the mortality associated with general anesthesia; on the other hand, the great hazard of spinal anesthesia in the minds of