Digital block with or without the addition of epinephrine in the anesthetic solution.

Background And Objectives: Review of various techniques for digital blocks with local anesthetic, with or without epinephrine.

Contents: Description of various procedures and comparison of results reported in the literature, mainly on latency and quality of anesthesia, details on vasoconstrictor effect of epinephrine, intraoperative bleeding, necessity of tourniquet use, duration of anesthesia and postoperative analgesia, blood flow and digital SpO2 behavior, local and systemic complications, and also approaches and drugs to be used in certain situations of ischemia.

Conclusions: The advantages of adding epinephrine to the anesthetic solution are minor when compared to the risks of the procedure, and it seems dangerous to use a vasoconstrictor in the fingers, unless the safety of the technique and the possibility of discarding the tourniquet are definitely proven.

[Digital block with or without the addition of epinephrine in the anesthetic solution].

Background And Objectives: Review of various techniques for digital blocks with local anesthetic, with or without epinephrine.

Contents: Description of various procedures and comparison of results reported in the literature, mainly on latency and quality of anesthesia, details on vasoconstrictor effect of epinephrine, intraoperative bleeding, necessity of tourniquet use, duration of anesthesia and postoperative analgesia, blood flow and digital SpO2 behavior, local and systemic complications, and also approaches and drugs to be used in certain situations of ischemia.

Conclusions: The advantages of adding epinephrine to the anesthetic solution are minor when compared to the risks of the procedure, and it seems dangerous to use a vasoconstrictor in the fingers, unless the safety of the technique and the possibility of discarding the tourniquet are definitely proven.

[Carlos Parsloe (1919-2009) - in memory].

Background And Objectives: Dr. Carlos Pereira Parsloe was the most important and well known Brazilian anesthesiologist, and the one who achieved greater world repercussion. He played a fundamental role as President of the Scientific Commission of the III World congress of Anesthesiology (Brazil).

[The first to use surgical anesthesia was not a dentist, but the physician Crawford Williamson Long].

Background And Objectives: The history of the discovery of anesthesia is not totally explained, but it is easy to establish that Crawford Williamson Long was the first to use sulfuric ether to operate several patients with no pain and to perform obstetric procedures. History is a bridge connecting the past to the present and should be studied and understood from its first pillars. So, it is justifiable to recall or get to know who was Long, certainly a name almost unknown for many of us, and which has been his participation in the discovery of anesthesia.