Skin pulse wave monitoring during lumbar epidural and spinal anesthesia.

The effectiveness of pulse wave monitoring of the big toes was compared with loss of cold discrimination to determine the onset of nerve blockade during lumbar epidural and spinal anesthesia. Forty-seven patients scheduled for elective urologic or lower extremity operations were assigned to one of three groups. Group 1 (15 patients) received epidural mepivacaine 1.5% with epinephrine; group 2 (12 patients), epidural bupivacaine 0.5%, and group 3 (20 patients), spinal bupivacaine 0.5%. In the epidural groups, the mean time to onset of increases in pulse wave amplitude was less than half the mean time to onset of decrease in cold discrimination (P less than 0.05). In patients given spinal anesthesia, there was no significant difference. The pulse wave monitor seems to be a sensitive and objective detector of early anesthetic effect during spinal and epidural anesthesia.