The Programmed Intermittent Epidural Bolus Adrenaline Study

Labor is often painful for the woman going through it, and thus many women choose to have pain relief by an epidural catheter.

This is done by placing a thin plastic catheter in the epidural space in the lower back of the patient, and injecting a medicine solution usually consisting of local anesthesia and opioids.

To ensure an effective pain relief through the labor process, additional medicine solution is injected through the catheter. Traditionally, this is done by a continuous infusion, often with the addition of patient controlled boluses.

In this study the investigators investigate if maintaining the pain relief through programmed hourly intermittent boluses is more effective than continuous infusion. This is done in other studies with promising results, but the difference in this study is the addition of adrenaline to the medicine solution in order to make it more effective.

Inclusion criteria

• Pregnant women in labor requesting epidural analgesia
• ASA group 1 and 2
• 0 or 1 previous births
• Must be at least 18 years of age.
• Singleton pregnancy
• Active labor
• Signed informed consent and expected cooperation of the patient

Exclusion criteria

• Poor communication skills in norwegian or english
• Adverse reactions to local anesthetics or synthetic opioids
• Body height below 150 cm
• Gestational age below 37 weeks, 0 days
• Any contraindication to epidural catheter placement (e.g. patients with coagulopathy, infection in area etc)
• Pre-eclampsia
• Sound reason by the investigator to suspect patient non-compliance (e.g. with use of PCEA)