Side Effects Of Spinal Anesthesia After Giving Birth

Spinal block or spinal anesthesia is commonly used for delivering pregnant women who will undergo C-section. A strong anesthetic medicine is directly injected into the cerebrospinal fluid and this mainly numbs the body parts below and above the site of injection.

This kind of anesthesia is said to be the most preferred approach since it has higher maternal mortality according to John S. McDonald, MD, chair of the department of anesthesiology and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA Medical Center, as posted by LiveStrong.

This has few advantages as well compared to the general anesthesia that is commonly used in different major surgeries. Spinal anesthesia doesn't make the patient sleep and they can witness the moment they give birth. Babies that are born are less exposed to anesthetic drugs compared to those patients who use general anesthesia.

However, there are some negative effects to those patients given with spinal block after giving birth.

Postpartum or postnatal side effects:

1.      Mothers who underwent C-section with spinal anesthesia has a risk of having mild respiratory and circulatory depression wherein patients are experiencing a shortness of breath, numbness and followed by vomiting and the risk is higher to those who are obese and short women. This can be treated but it has to be intravenous drugs.

2.      Urinary retention is a very common side effect of spinal anesthesia since the nerves responsible for draining your bladder will be the last to recover from the anesthesia as explained by HubPages. This will cause discomfort to patients and there is a need to insert a catheter to let out some urine from your bladder but this effect is just short-term

3.      Back pain where the needle is inserted can last for few days. Insertion of the needle causes some trauma to the tissues in the spinal cord. Healing may not be that fast that is why the pain can last for few days.

4.      Spinal headache is a result of spinal fluid leakage from the dura. The dura is the thin membrane that holds the spinal fluid so when the needle is injected to the dura, the spinal fluid leaks causing headache. This problem is now less often because doctors nowadays are using much thinner and smaller needles. The lesser spinal fluid leaks mean lesser headache the patient experiences.