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Purpose

Although ropivacaine has been used to provide spinal anesthesia in the surgical population, its intrathecal administration for labour analgesia has only recently been described. We evaluated the effects of low dose intrathecal ropivacaine with or without sufentanil for labour analgesia.

Methods

Thirty-six term parturients in active labour were randomly assigned to receive 3 mg of intrathecal ropivacaine (group R) or 3 mg ropivacaine with 10 μg of sufentanil (group RS). Patients were evaluated by a blinded observer for hypotension, linear analogue score (VAS 0–100) for labour pain, motor power in the lower limbs, onset of analgesia, sensation to cold and pin prick, duration of analgesia, and neonatal Apgar scores. The following day patients were assessed for satisfaction, headache and neurologic deficit.

Results

The mean duration of analgesia in the R group was 41.4±4.9 min and 95.0±6.1 min in the RS …