Epidural Analgesia

Objective: To find out the association of epidural analgesia duringlabour with long termbackache. Design: A randomized controlled trial. Setting: Combined Military Hospital Rawalpindi.Period: March 2002 to Feb 2003. Material and Methods: 100 randomized to epidural group and 100 randomized tonon-epidural group. In the follow up study 92 women were from the epidural group and 89 from the non-epidural group.Results: There were no significant differences between groups in demographic details or other key characteristics.There were no significant differences in the onset or duration of low back pain. There were no differences in selfreported measures of disability in activities of daily living and no significant differences in measurements of spinalmobility. Conclusions: The incidence of new long term backache was not significantly increased in women whoreceived epidural analgesia in labour. Motor block resulting from epidural local anaesthetic administration was not asignificant factor in the development of backache.