A comparison of regional anesthesia / analgesia applications in patients with and without obesity: A prospective observational study

OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study is to compare the difficulty evaluations of practitioners during regional anesthesia (RA) applications in obese and non-obese patients. In addition, the relationship between the complications and success rates encountered during the applications with obesity and difficulty assessment was also investigated. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The study was designed as a prospective, cross-sectional, descriptive study. All RA applications including all neuroaxial and peripheral blocks to be performed in our hospital between May 2019 and May 2020 for an average of 1 year were included. By comparing 12 different RA applications; the seniority of the practitioner, evaluation of difficulty, application time, application of sedation, monitoring method, success of block, development of complications and patient satisfaction were evaluated. RESULTS: In this study in which 554 patients were evaluated in total, 28%of the patients were evaluated as obese. Most of the RA applications were axillary and spinal applications (52.1%). The majority of the first practitioners (56.3%) were physicians who had been residents for more than 2 years. In 4.7%of the patients, RA application was evaluated as unsuccessful. Complications developed in 5.7%, most of them were hypotension /bradycardia. CONCLUSION: The practitioners had significant difficulties during axillary, spinal and epidural injection applications in obese patients, but there was no significant relationship between obesity and difficulty level in cervical, supraclavicular, combined spinal-epidural, paravertebral and erector spina applications. No significant relationship was found between obesity and complications or success of the application in total.