Circulatory Adjustments During High Spinal Anesthesia

It is generally agreed among experienced surgeons and anesthetists that hypotension is a corollary of high spinal anesthesia. However, any discussion of the cause, the significance to the patient's welfare or the optimum treatment for the fall in blood pressure so regularly observed while operation is in progress during high spinal anesthesia would provoke many arguments. Theoretical discourses, data from laboratory experiments and clinical investigations of spinal anesthesia have multiplied with the years since the method was first advocated, and no small fraction of this accumulated literature is devoted to the problems concerned with the circulatory adjustments. Despite these efforts, the problems await solution and, notwithstanding the fact that a decided fall in blood pressure from whatever cause must be considered unphysiologic, this complication during spinal anesthesia has not been evaluated satisfactorily in terms of morbidity and mortality. It is important to evaluate accurately the effects of spinal anesthesia on