Bupivacaine Digital Blocks: How Long is the Pain Relief and Temperature Elevation?

Lidocaine finger blocks have been shown to provide analgesia for nearly 5 hours without epinephrine and approximately 10 hours with epinephrine - essentially doubling its duration.1,2 The analgesic effect of epinephrine on the duration of bupivacaine finger blocks remains unknown.

Bupivacaine finger injection provides a much longer duration of action than lidocaine. Previous studies have shown the duration of action to be as long as 24.9 hours.1 In the senior author's experience, however, patients who get bupivacaine blocks start asking for pain medication as early as 7 hours after the block. Is it possible that the pain blocking effect of bupivacaine has a different duration than the touch and pressure effects? The answer to this question also remains unknown.

The third unknown question about bupivacaine digital blocks is their effect on fingertip temperature. It has been shown that lidocaine wrist blocks increase temperature in finger tips, and this has been postulated to be potentially helpful in frostbite to provide pain relief and hyperemia.3 Previous studies have shown bupivacaine to exhibit vasodilatory properties at clinical concentrations of injection.4-7 Does bupivacaine provide increased warmth to the finger tip? How long does it last?

The goals of this study are three fold: 1.) To determine what effect epinephrine has on the duration of bupivacaine finger block anesthesia. 2.) To assess the duration of action of bupivacaine with and without epinephrine on the digital sensory modalities of pain, touch and pressure, and 3.) To assess the finger tip temperature changes that result from bupivacaine digital blocks with and without epinephrine.