Low-dose spinal anaesthesia provides effective labour analgesia and does not limit ambulation

Abstract

Background: While epidural analgesia for labour pain is standard in high-resource countries, minimal to no analgesia is usually provided in low-resource countries. Intrathecal local anaesthetics provide good pain relief, but the potential impact on ambulation is of concern. Our objective was to determine if a low-dose local anaesthetic combined with an opioid would provide reasonable pain relief, while allowing ambulation in a low-resource setting.