Local anesthesia for vitreoretinal surgery.

A new technique for retrobulbar anesthesia for use during vitreoretinal surgery is described. A blunt 19-gauge cannula is used to directly inject the anesthetic agent into the retrobulbar space via a sub-Tenon's approach. The method reported herein virtually eliminates the possibility of complications from the administration of a standard retrobulbar block and allows prolonged vitreoretinal surgery to be performed under local anesthesia. We report the results of our first fifty-eight cases of vitreoretinal surgery performed using this technique.