Conventional versus diluted spinal anesthesia for lower limb tumescent liposuction: a randomized clinical trial

Background & Objectives: Liposuction is being increasingly done as a daycare procedure under spinal anesthesia. The aim of daycare surgery is to have fast recovery of psychomotor and cognitive functions, that allow early discharge of the patients. This study was done to compare conventional versus diluted spinal anesthesia in lower limb liposuction procedures in terms of time to discharge, patient satisfaction and redo rate. Methodology: We recruited 108 female patients, and randomly allocated them into either a conventional spinal group (Group CS), that received 15 mg of bupivacaine or a diluted spinal group (Group DS) that received a diluted 7.5 mg bupivacaine. All patients underwent tumescent liposuction. The primary outcome was to assess time to home readiness and secondary outcome was patient satisfaction, the incidence of complications and the redo rate. Data were analyzed by analysis of variance test, Student’s t‑test, Whitney U test and Chi‑square tests. P < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Results: The Group DS was found to have a significantly less duration of hospital stay (216.89 ± 34.99 min) as compared to Group CS (302.23 ± 22.35 min) (P < 0.001). Patients in DS group were found to have a significantly high satisfaction score as compared to Group CS (P < 0.001). Overall Incidence of complications was found to be less in Group DS as compared to Group CS (P < 0.001). Conclusion: The use of a diluted, lower dosage of bupivacaine intrathecally provides early discharge with satisfactory anesthesia in lower limb liposuction procedures. The complication and redo rates were also significantly less with the use of diluted bupivacaine for spinal anesthesia. Keywords: Lower limb liposuction; Bupivacaine; Discharge time; Patient satisfaction; Complications Citation: Abdelmoaty Elfeky HA, Bahgat N, Abdelsalam Elmilegy AA, Habeeb RM. Conventional versus diluted spinal anesthesia for lower limb tumescent liposuction: a randomized clinical trial. Anaesth. pain intensive care 2024;28(6):990-995; DOI: 10.35975/apic.v28i6.2616 Received: April 13, 2024; Revised: February 21, 2024; Accepted: July 05, 2024