Background and Goal of Study: Regional anaesthesia (RA) is a first choice for category 1 to 3 urgency caesarean sections (CS). However, general anaesthesia (GA) is sometimes performed expecting shorter delivery time. The goal of our study was to evaluate time differences between GA and RA in each urgency category (UC) of CS.
Methodology: A prospective study was carried out in Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LUHS), Department of Obstetrics from January to December, 2016. The surgeries were classified into four urgency categories according to Lucas four-grade classification system. Intervals of anaesthesia-induction time and decision-to-delivery were compared between spinal anaesthesia (SA), GA and epidural anaesthesia (EA) in each urgency category. Statistical analysis was performed using Student‘s t-test, ANOWA and Kruskall-Wallis tests. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: There were 1677 CS included in our study. Category I urgency 124 (8.0%), category II urgency – 344 (22.3%), category III urgency – 431 (25.7%) and category IV – 643 (41.7%). SA was performed to 1226 (73.2%), GA – 194 (11.6%) an EA to 254 (15.2%) patients. Time of anaesthesia-induction time and decision-to-delivery between SA, GA, EA in different urgency categories are shown in table 1. Anaesthesia-induction time had no significant differences between types of anaesthesia in category IV urgency but GA significantly had the shortest interval in category I-III urgency. Decision-to-delivery time was signifficantly longer in SA group in category I urgency, EA was shorter than SA in category II urgency and EA was also shorter compared to SA and GA in Category-III urgency.

Conclusion: GA has the shortest anaesthesia-induction time interval and EA has the shortest decision-delivery interval in category I-III urgency CS.





02 / Time intervals of anaesthesia-induction time and decision-to-delivery in different urgency categories for caesarean section