A Comparative Study Between Lumbar Epidural Analgesia Versus Local Infiltration Anesthesia Combined With Dexmedetomidine Intravenous Infusion in Endoscopic Lumbar Discectomy Surgeries: A Retrospective Study

In recent years, with the development of medical instruments, minimally invasive surgical methods for lumbar disc herniation became increasingly popular, such as percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic discectomy (PTED) PTED under local anesthesia (LA) is recommended in consideration of safety. Under LA, patients keep conscious during the procedure, and the surgeon can obtain feedback directly from the patients if the nerve is interfered. However, in clinical practice, we found that many patients couldn't tolerate the pain during operation especially when placing the working channel Dexmedetomidine, a highly selective alpha 2 adrenoreceptor agonist, has unique characteristics in providing sedation and analgesia. Due to its central sympatholytic action, DEX produces dose-dependent sedation, antinociception and anxiolysis, while decreasing intraoperative hypertension and tachycardia episodes Epidural anesthesia is another major method which can keep patients awake during surgery and the surgeons can check the function of the nerve from the maintained motor function of patients' lower limbs