ABSTRACT
Two groups of patients, 10 patients each were subjected to ano-rectal operations. One group received spinal analgesia, the other group received epidural analgesia. Mepivacaine 4% solution was used in spinal analgesia, and bupivacaine 0.5% in epidural analgesia. The onset of analgesia was very rapid in subarachnoid group after 2.5 minutes and delayed in epidural group after 8.5 minutes. The heamodynamic changes were gradual in both groups and not severe except for some cases. There was significant drop of the mean arterial blood pressure in both groups, but was more gradual in epidural group. Duration of analgesia was 142.3 minutes for spinal and 236 minutes for epidural analgesia. The need for systemic analgesics was delayed for epidural group up to 7.5 hours, but that for spinal was 2.7 hours. In 30% of epidural analgesia no post-operative analgesia was required while all the patients of spinal needed post operative analgesia. 40% of spinal suffered from post-operative headache. 20% of spinal group and 30% of epidural group complained of backache