Papers of the Week

Continuous spinal anesthesia (CSA) is a mode of anesthesia and analgesia that has various therapeutic advantages. CSA allows the anesthesiologist to titrate tiny doses of a local anesthetic to achieve the desired degree of spinal anesthesia. The duration can be extended to accommodate the demands of the protracted operation. Due to a lack of equipment and financial restraints, particularly in resource-constrained areas, and worries of neurologic consequences such as cauda equina syndrome, CSA is yet to acquire general acceptability among anesthesiologists. In terms of postoperative pain management, CSA can be comparable to epidural analgesia and is considered far superior to abdominal wall blocks when correctly applied. Here we discuss a case wherein a standard epidural catheter in subarachnoid space was used to successfully perform an emergency exploratory laparotomy.