NCT03100968

Utility of Ultrasound in Identification of Midline and Placement of Epidural in Severely Obese Parturients

Utility of Ultrasound in Identification of Midline and Placement of Epidural in Severely Obese Parturients: A Randomized, Prospective Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 150 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Alabama at Birmingham · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 19 Years – 45 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study will address the utility of ultrasound in the placement of an epidural catheter in severely obese parturients. Identification of midline can often be difficult using the standard method of palpation in obese patients. The Investigator will determine if the use of ultrasound decreases the amount of time and number of attempts required to place the epidural.

Detailed description

The use of ultrasound has expanded into many areas of medicine including the identification of bony landmarks to facilitate epidural placement in obstetric anesthesia. Using ultrasound for epidural placement has become popular over the last decade with several studies being published on the topic. The likely increase in popularity for ultrasound use in the obstetric population is the need to more reliably locate bony landmarks as the traditional palpation technique has been shown to be an inaccurate way to accomplish this. Given the fact that the long-taught palpation technique can be inaccurate and studies have validated the use of ultrasound for epidural placement, ultrasound technique is routinely taught by the obstetric anesthesiologists to the anesthesiology residents at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Also, since both techniques are considered standard practice at UAB, anesthesia providers (residents, fellows, and faculty) are free to choose either technique to locate bony structures of the back prior to epidural placement. Since no current study has specifically addressed its use in the obese pregnant patient, the investigators would like to validate its use in this population. In this study, investigators will evaluate the use of ultrasound in the obese population to determine if its use will decrease the time it takes to place the epidural and number of attempts required when compared to the traditional palpation technique. The study will also determine the success rate of epidural placement in both the palpation and ultrasound groups.

Conditions

• Epidural Anesthesia
• Spinal Ultrasound
• Obesity

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
PROCEDURE	Palpation	Traditional epidural methods used for the identification of the midline using palpation prior to procedure
DEVICE	Ultrasound	Lumbar spinal ultrasound performed for identification of the midline prior to procedure.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-06-22
• Primary completion: 2018-10-01
• Completion: 2021-09-01
• First posted: 2017-04-04
• Last updated: 2021-09-29
• Results posted: 2019-09-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States

Regulatory

• FDA-regulated device study