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ANESTHESIA ALERT
Scott Urigel, CRNA, MSN, and Jeff Molter, CRNA, MSB, MBA
TAP Blocks for Abdominal Surgery
This nerve block preserves lower limb motor and sensory functions.
relatively
new peripheral nerve
block that anesthetizes the nerves
supplying the anterior abdominal wall is
a great adjunct for
post-operative pain
control in abdominal, gynecologic or
urologic surgery. It's
ON TARGET Ultrasound confirms that the needle has
called the transverse advanced through the muscle layers and reached the TAP.
abdominis plane
(TAP) block. We perform TAP blocks daily at our facility. Our TAP
blocks are more accurate, more consistent and lower-risk than before
thanks to ultrasound, which lets us identify the appropriate tissue
plane and perform this block with greater accuracy under direct visualization.
A
Advantages of ultrasound
TAP blocks involve injecting a local anesthetic solution into the neurofascial plane between the internal oblique and transversus abdominis muscles. The TAP block targets the thoracolumbar nerves T7-L1
and provides somatic pain relief to the skin, muscles and parietal peritoneum of the anterolateral abdominal wall.
The procedure was first described in 2001 in the journal Anesthesia.
The author had been using a "landmark" technique — using anatomiA U G U S T 2013 | O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
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