A multicenter prospective study of 3,110 consecutive cases of elective epinephrine use in the fingers and hand: the Dalhousie Project clinical phase.

Purpose: To examine prospectively the incidence of digital infarction and phentolamine rescue in a large series of patients in whom local anesthesia with adrenaline was injected electively into the hand and fingers. There continues to be a commonly held belief that epinephrine injection is contraindicated in the finger despite a lack of valid evidence to support this concept in the literature.

Methods: From 2002 to 2004 there were 9 hand surgeons in 6 cities who prospectively recorded each consecutive case of elective hand and finger epinephrine injection.