Care Anaesthetics Patient information
Regional anaesthesia & nerve blocks.
Numbing a single limb or area with precise, ultrasound-guided injections, for excellent pain relief that outlasts the surgery itself. Often used for: shoulder surgery, joint replacement (knee/shoulder) surgery, and other surgeries including those your anaesthetist and or surgeon assess that it will be very beneficial for you.
Targeting the right nerves
A nerve block places local anaesthetic around the specific nerves supplying your operation site: a shoulder, arm, knee or foot. Using ultrasound in real time, I can see those nerves and guide the medicine exactly where it is needed.
On its own or alongside
A block can be your main anaesthetic, or it can be combined with sedation or a general anaesthetic so that you wake with the area already numb and far more comfortable.
Lasting relief
A good block can keep an area pain-free for many hours after surgery, easing you through the hardest early period and reducing how much pain medication you need. The numbness and weakness wear off gradually; we tell you how to protect the area until they do. Often you will need to ask for strong pain relief medications after the nerve block has worn off, I consider this the nerve block → medication baton handover!
Safety
It is considered very safe to have a regional / nerve block. Less than 1:10,000 chance of persisting nerve injury which may be experienced as tingling or numbness or rarely weakness of the area supplied by the nerve. For more risks, see here