Parallel Session

Friday , April 4, 2003

Parallel I
Pain Mechanisms/Pain Practices

Pre-emptive Analgesia in Clinical Practice This lecture will review our current understanding of pre-emptive analgesia by contrasting theoretical concerns and animal models of pain with considerations for clinical care.

Animal Models of Pain and Analgesia
This lecture will review animal models of pain and their influence on and implications for the clinical management of pain in patients.

Managing Acute Pain in the Opioid Tolerant Patient
This lecture will review management philosophies and strategies useful for the opioid tolerant patient in acute pain.

Amitriptine: Is long acting and pain selective RA around the corner?
This lecture will review the ongoing investigations of amitriptline and its potential for utility as a regional anesthetic agent.

Parallel II
Peripheral Nerve Block Techniques

Paravertebral Blockade This lecture will review the anatomy, history, clinical practices and comparative literature on paravertebral blockade.

PRO/CON: Multiple Injection PNB
This pro-con discussion will highlight old and new literature questioning and supportive of single and multiple injection peripheral nerve block techniques.

Frontiers in Nerve Stimulation
This lecture will provide an historical perspective on the development of peripheral nerve stimulation; explain the best features of the newest equipment and what will be available in the future.

Imaging Techniques for PNB
This lecture will provide an overview of how advances in imaging techniques for the placement of peripheral nerve blocks are changing our practices and understanding.

Parallel III
Outcomes and Regional Anesthesia

Outcomes and Regional Anesthesia This lecture will provide an introduction and overview of the concepts of outcomes research and Evidence-Based Medicine and the role of RA in both.

Catheter-Congruent Analgesia
This lecture will review how thoracic versus lumbar epidural catheter placement may influence perioperative recovery, morbidity, and mortality.

The Other end of the Needle: Patient oriented outcomes
This lecture will provide an introduction to the concept of patient-oriented outcomes including the importance of measuring these outcomes in order to assess the success of anesthetic practices.

Improving Outcomes through Multi-modal Analgesia
This lecture will provide an overview of perioperative patient recovery (including differentiating between short- and long-term assessments of recovery) and describe how anesthesiologists might facilitate short-term and long-term patient recovery using multi-modal analgesia.

Obstetrical Anesthesia/Analgesia

Taking the "Labor" out of Labor Analgesia
This lecture will review methods, both from a systems and technique perspective, to reduce the manpower requirements to provide labor analgesia.

Anesthesia for Cesarean Section
This lecture will review the choices of anesthesia for cesarean section under different circumstances, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and how to choose the most appropriate technique and optimize it.

Morbid Obesity in Pregnancy: A growing problem
This lecture will review the increase in obesity, especially morbid obesity, in children and young adults in the US, what challenges it presents for obstetric and obstetric anesthesia practice, and how the anesthesiologist should approach the morbidly obese patient on the labor floor.

PRO/CON: Phenylephrine: Drug of choice for maternal hypotension?
This pro-con debate will highlight recent and old literature regarding the selection of the best treatment for hypotension associated with regional anesthesia in obstetrics, focusing on the possible utility of phenylephrine to replace ephedrine under some or all circumstances.