Why the study?
Does epidural anaesthesia improve maternal and neonatal outcomes compared to general anaesthesia in stable women with eclampsia undergoing caesarean delivery?
Does epidural anaesthesia improve maternal and neonatal outcomes compared to general anaesthesia in stable women with eclampsia undergoing caesarean delivery?
Epidural anaesthesia appears safe and may improve neonatal one-minute Apgar scores compared to general anaesthesia in stable women with eclampsia.
May support epidural anaesthesia in stable eclampsia caesareans; hypothesis-generating and requires randomized confirmation before practice change.
OBJECTIVE: To compare retrospectively the outcome of caesarean section under epidural anaesthesia with that of general anaesthesia in "stable" women with eclampsia. DESIGN: Retrospective review. METHOD: Over the five-year study period, there were 533 women with eclampsia and of these 66 women (12.4%), fulfilled the criteria of being 'stable'. Of the 66 women, 37 received epidural, 27 general, and 2 spinal anaesthesia. RESULTS: There were no major complications with either general or epidural anaesthesia. Epidural anaesthesia was associated with higher one-minute Apgar scores. CONCLUSION: This study indicates that both maternal and neonatal outcomes are not affected adversely by the use of epidural anaesthesia in selected cases of eclampsia.
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Moodley et al. (2001) studied this question.
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