Effects of bilateral erector spinae plane block for posterior lumbar spine surgery in elderly patients.

Objectives: With the rapid development of aging population, the number of elderly patients undergoing posterior lumbar spine surgery continues to increase. Lumbar spine surgery could cause moderate to severe postoperative pain, and the conventional opioid-based analgesia techniques have many side effects, which are barriers to the recovery after surgery of the elderly. Previous studies have demonstrated that erector spinae plane block (ESPB) could bring about favorable analgesia in spinal surgery.

Dexmedetomidine alleviates the hypoxic-ischemic brain damage via miR-20a-5p/methionine adenosyltransferase 2B axis in rat pups.

Objective: The neuroprotective effect of dexmedetomidine (DEX) has been demonstrated in hypoxic-ischemic brain damage (HIBD) animal models, the mechanism of which will be the foothold in this work.

Methods: After establishment of HIBD rat model, the rats were treated with DEX, miR-20a-5p agomir and adenoviral methionine adenosyltransferase 2B (MAT2B) overexpression vector, and then their brain tissues were harvested. The infarction volume and pathological changes of these brain tissues were measured using the triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC), Nissl and hematoxylin-eosin (HE) stainings.