Regional Anaesthesia in Intensive Care Unit

Pain is a major problem in Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Adequate pain management not only means decreasing the pain intensity, but also improving the functionality and allowing the early mobilization that is a prerequisite for improving recovery and decreasing the risk of complications in ICU. The complex problems involved in pain, analgesic interventions, and outcome have been emphasized in several surveys over the past decades, but apparently with only small improvements, despite the existence of several guidelines for perioperative pain management.

Regional analgesia techniques (peripheral and neuraxial nerve blocks) have the potential to decrease the physiological stress response to trauma or surgery, reducing the possibility of surgical complications and improving the outcomes. Recent studies suggested that surgical and trauma ICU patients receive opioid-hypnotics continuous infusions to prevent pain and agitation that could increase the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder and chronic neuropathic pain symptoms, and chronic opioid use. Also they may reduce the total amount of opioid analgesics necessary to achieve adequate pain control and the development of potentially dangerous side effects. The use of the regional anesthesia technique in the ICU, however, can, in part, be limited by the presence of hemodynamic instability, bleeding diathesis, and by the fear of the performing procedures potentially associated with significant side effects in heavily sedated patients.

Although regional anesthesia emerges as a new and very interesting player for pain management in ICU, today very few data exists about the use of RA (including PNB and neuraxial nerves blocks) by the practicians in ICU/stepdown units. The main objective of this study is to assess the use of RA for pain management both initiates in the operative room for surgical patients then transferred in ICU/stepdown units and performs directly by the practicians in ICU/stepdown units, in several french units.