The time to perform spinal or general anaesthesia in COVID-19 positive parturients requiring emergency caesarean delivery: A prospective crossover simulation study

This research was designed to demonstrate in simulation that providing general anaesthesia for suspected or confirmed COVID – 19 parturients undergoing emergency caesarean delivery, would yield a similar time as compared with spinal anaesthesia due to the required modifications around infection precautions in the COVID-19 population. Usually, staff specialists prefer general anaesthesia for emergency caesarean delivery since it provides faster anaesthesia. Although this was a small study with 9 staff specialist anaesthetists, we could demonstrate that there was no difference in time between both techniques. Results Overall and irrespective of group allocation the mean time to complete the spinal anaesthesia scenario was 27.4 minutes, while for the general anaesthesia scenario was 24.0. There was no statistical difference between these times. Limitations: small study in Australia and the variations in practice in other countries may reduce considerably the generalisability of our findings.