Efficacy of brachial plexus block in reducing radial artery spasm during interventional aneurysm surgery

Radial artery spasm (RAS) occurs in around 50% of patients who undergo interventional aneurysm surgery through the radial artery approach, leading to suboptimal long-term recovery for some. We suggested using brachial plexus block (BPB) to enhance surgical impact on the radial artery, and we confirmed that preconditioning with BPB effectively reduces RAS occurrence and improves prognosis. A total of 177 patients were randomly assigned to either the BPB group or the control group. The main outcome measure was diagnosing RAS incidence through intraoperative angiography, characterized by defects at vessel edges during radial artery angiography. In the control group, RAS occurred in 62.5% (55 out of 88), while it only appeared in 9.0% (8 out of 89) in the BPB group-a significant absolute difference (-53.5 percentage points). The findings suggest that BPB may be an effective strategy to reduce intraoperative RAS incidence in patients undergoing transradial access (TRA) for intracranial aneurysm interventional surgery.