Epidurals and backache: again?

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7371.1037/b

BMJ 2002;325:1037 ( 2 November )

Letters

Epidurals and backache: again?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Anaesthetists have reason to be grateful to the BMJ for publishing yet another trial, albeit a small one, showing thatepidural analgesia is not associated with long term backache.¹On each occasion this outcome seems to come as a surprise, sothe finding is worth repeating. The BMJ published with alacrityseveral retrospective studies that gave the erroneous result thatepidurals did cause backache,² but it took more persuadingto publish prospective studies with negative results,³ andit flatly refused to publish one showing epidurals were good forbabies $---$ good news is nonews.

Readers may find it useful to know that further clinical details of this same study can be found in an earlier publicationby Howell et al, in which 184 women were randomised to epiduraland 185 to non-epidural analgesia with primary outcome measuresas backache 3 and 12 months after delivery.⁴

The authors say that crossover between treatment . . . [Full text of this article]

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Randomised study of long term outcome after epidural versus non-epidural analgesia during labour: Charlotte J Howell, Tracy Dean, Linda Lucking, Krysia Dziedzic, Peter W Jones, and Richard B Johanson
BMJ 2002 325: 357. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]