Trends in regional anaesthesia: insights from Anaesthesiology Intensive Therapy

Regional anaesthesia has moved from the margins of perioperative care to a central position in many pathways.In an increasing number of procedures, contemporary, procedure-specific guidelines now recommend neuraxial or peripheral nerve blocks as core elements of multimodal analgesia, so in many centres these techniques are moving from optional adjuncts towards an expected part of standard care, along with a parallel shift in patients' expectations [1][2][3][4].The question is now increasingly less about whether to use regional anaesthesia and more about how to select and deliver specific techniques that align with these recommendations and local resource constraints.Some of the studies published in Anaesthesiology Intensive Therapy (AIT) address the practical aspects of care while going beyond simply demonstrating that regional blocks work.Instead, they explore how block choice can preserve motor function, how outcomes can be framed in terms of recovery and longer-term wellbeing, and how questions of volume, technique and safety are addressed in everyday practice.The resulting picture is not of a single pivotal trial, but of a set of pragmatic contributions that, together with larger RCTs, meta-analyses and guidelines, help shape future standards of care.