No abstract

Results suggest that preemptive epidural administration of morphine with or without bupivacaine is a safe and effective method of inducing long-lasting analgesia in dogs and cats and is superior to standard management of postoperative pain with repeated injection of oxymorphone and ketoprofen.

The preoperative epidurally administered morphine-bupivacaine combination induced better analgesia than morphine alone and should be considered for use in clinical patients. The degree of hemodynamic depression associated with the combination was considered acceptable for healthy patients undergoing elective surgery.

No abstract

Sixteen healthy male dogs were used at random in this protocol. The dogs were anaesthetized with isoflurane in oxygen. Eight of the dogs received 0.25 mg/kg of butorphanol (group B) and the others an equal volume of isotonic saline (group S) administered by a catheter inserted in the lumbosacral epidural space. Butorphanol concentrations in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were measured using high-performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection. Maximum concentration of butorphanol and time to obtain this concentration were 42.28 ng/mL at 13.88 min in blood, and 18.03 ng/mL at 30 min in CSF. Volume of distribution, clearance, mean distribution and elimination half-lives were respectively 4.39 L/kg, 2.02 L/h.kg, 16.5 min and 189.1 min. Mean isoflurane minimal alveolar concentration values for group B obtained following hind- or forelimb stimulation decreased by 31% after epidural butorphanol. Cutaneous analgesia (to pin-prick test) persisted for 3 h after the end of isoflurane anaesthesia in group B and was in correlation with the plasmatic analgesic dose of butorphanol (9 ng/mL). These results suggested that analgesia was predominantly obtained by action of butorphanol on the supraspinal structures following its vascular systemic absorption.