Key result
Early epidural placement and ultrasound guidance safely manage labour analgesia difficulties in obese parturients.
Why the study?
Pregnancy physiology combined with obesity poses challenges for anaesthesiologists, as obesity makes successfully providing epidural analgesia to a parturient more difficult.
What are the safety concerns and complications of labour epidural analgesia in obese parturients?
What are the safety concerns and complications of labour epidural analgesia in obese parturients?
This narrative review summarizes recent data and evidence-based approaches for providing safe labour epidural analgesia in obese pregnant women.
May inform safer epidural techniques in obese parturients; leaves open need for RCTs to confirm benefits.
The physiological transformations accompanying pregnancy, compounded by the implications of obesity, pose intricate challenges for anaesthesiologists attending to obese parturients. Obesity makes it harder to successfully provide epidural analgesia to a parturient. This narrative review explains the most recent data on the safety and complications of providing labour epidural analgesia in obese expectant mothers. We have emphasised the evidence-based approaches that are the most effective for obese pregnant mothers receiving labour epidural analgesia.
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Saxena et al. (2024) conducted a review in Obesity in pregnancy requiring labour analgesia (n=5,702). Labour epidural analgesia (including ultrasound-assisted techniques) was evaluated. Early placement of epidural catheters and the use of ultrasound guidance by experienced providers are recommended to safely manage the increased procedural difficulties of labour epidural analgesia in obese parturients.
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