Why was 10% procaine used?

摘要

To the Editor:-I read the article "Procaine Spinal Neurotoxicity" by Drs. Johnson and Swanson1 with great interest. At the same time, I became curious about their use of 10% procaine for spinal anesthesia. The risks of intrathecal administration of highly concentrated procaine were outlined before, in both a clinical report describing 14 cases of cauda equina syndrome after durocaine (10% procaine with a vehicle of glycerin and ethanol) and an animal study suggesting that the induced cauda equina syndrome resulted not from drug additives but procaine itself. In 1991, Rigler et al. described four cases of cauda equina syndrome after spinal anesthesia using 5% lidocaine or 0.5% tetracaine. Their report resulted in rediscovering and widely reporting the serious reality of the risks associated with the highly concentrated local anesthetics in use for spinal anesthesia. Although various mechanisms for local anesthetic neurotoxicity have been advocated, the mechanisms remain unclear. However, it is widely accepted that the use of highly concentrated local anesthetics is associated with a substantial risk for cauda equina syndrome. Eisenach and Yaksh6 also indicated the importance of this risk in an editorial, citing the dictum of Paracelsus that "there is no safe drug, only safe doses or concentrations."