Combined Supraclavicular Block and General Anesthesia in Pediatric Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease

Established renal disease is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in children and has implications for the conduct of general anesthesia (1).

Anesthetic management of pediatric patients is uniquely challenging. A large part of the anesthetic care includes pain management, management of concomitant disease, and risk reduction for adverse events. Perioperative pain management usually involves a multimodal pharmacologic approach to minimize opioid requirements. Regional anesthesia is valuable for postoperative pain control (2).

Postoperative analgesia is dictated by the extent and nature of the surgery. Regional block should be utilized where possible for its opioid-sparing effects. Where morphine infusions are commenced, the dose should be reduced due to the risk of accumulation of active metabolites and resultant opiate toxicity. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are always avoided due to their deleterious effects on urine output (3).

Pediatric regional anesthesia is one of the most valuable and safe tools to treat perioperative pain and is an essential part of modern anesthetic practice. It provides excellent pain relief and allows caregivers to use multimodal analgesic techniques and decrease the use of opioids. Upper extremity brachial plexus blocks in children Various approaches to brachial plexus are available. The choice of the block is made depending on the indications. The supra-clavicular approach covers all the surgeries of the humerus and below (4).

The use of regional anaesthesia is mostly associated with vasodilatation which may guard against arterial spasm and may play a role in decreasing the postoperative complication and success of the superficialization of the arteriovenous shunt as a line for hemodialysis.

Inclusion criteria

• Pediatric patients of less than 18 years old.
• with chronic kidney disease.
• undergoing upper limb superficialization of arteriovenous fistula for haemodialysis.

Exclusion criteria

• Patient known to have allergy to the studied drugs.
• Patients with contraindications to regional anesthesia.