Pain relief in labour, today, is attracting more clinical and scientific interest. The pain of childbirth is arguably one of the most severe types of pain a woman will experience in her lifetime. Our aim was to compare the duration and quality of analgesia of epidural bupivacaine, fentanyl and combination of epidural bupivacaine, fentanyl, and clonidine by intermittent bolus technique in labour analgesia. Total number of 60 parturients studied was divided into two groups randomly. All of them were between age groups of 18-26 years and their deliveries were expected to be normal vaginal deliveries. Group-I and Group-II are study groups. After delivery an additional dose of the respective drug was given before removal of the epidural catheter for further analgesia. All the newborns in both the groups were assessed for the effect of the drug by determining the APGAR scores immediately after delivery at 1min, 5 mins and 10 mins. Onset of analgesia, Duration of analgesia with the first dose, Total number of doses required, the duration of labor, APGAR score, Motor blockade, type of delivery and Quality of analgesia were the parameters measured. It may be concluded that using a combination of bupivacaine, fentanyl with clonidine during epidural analgesia for labor provides excellent pain relief, prolonged duration of action with simultaneously decreasing the top-ups required, thereby reducing the total local anesthetic requirement compared to bupivacaine with fentanyl.

Central neuraxial blocked is one of the safest and efficacious methods of anaesthesia and analgesia. It has the added advantage of prolonged pain relief into the postoperative period. Epidural analgesia has increased steadily in popularity when compared to spinal anaesthesia due to its neurological consequences and improved post-operative analgesia with epidural Opioids and as a consequence decreased side effects and prolonged the duration of analgesia. Present study is undertaken to compare hemodynamic and analgesic characteristics using a 0.75% ropivacaine to a conventional dose of 0.5% bupivacaine for cesarean section under epidural anaesthesia. This study was conducted in ASA Grade I 50 singleton parturient to compare hemodynamics, APGAR scores and analgesic characteristics of ropivacaine and bupivacaine. We have observed that the onset of sensory blockade was slower with ropivacaine and the duration of sensory blockade was also less. Whereas there was no significant change in haemodynamics and APGAR scores with both the drugs.

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