1.
Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
;
: 321-324, 2011.
Article
in Korean
| WPRIM
| ID: wpr-69755
ABSTRACT
The breakage of epidural catheter seldom makes severe complication, but it may be a stressful event to nervous chronic pain patients. We discovered a retained epidural catheter in plain x-ray image and CT scan following a percutaneous epidural neuroplasty for a 62-year-old woman. Even though surgical removal of the catheter was not tried for 1 year, we decided to remove the catheter fragment as the patient's request, if exploration would be easy. Sonographic evaluation showed that the tip of the epidural catheter beneath subcunateous tissue between sacral hiatus. Ultrasound will be an invaluable tool when trying to remove the broken catheter under local anesthesia if its tip is out of the sacral hiatus.