changing world of local anesthetics

With the renewed interest in multimodal postoperative analgesia and the rapidly evolving medical specialty of interventional pain management, the concerns about the toxicity and the undesirable short duration of local anesthetic agents has lead the researchers to explore different options. These include modification of drug molecule with the discovery of new molecules, e.g. levobupivacaine, as well as drug molecule binding with liposomes. Various studies are being carried out to document comparative biophysical parameters of these drugs. This editorial compliments a similar research study by Narayanappa AB, et al, being published in this issue