Incidence of epidural haematoma and neurological injury in cardiovascular patients with epidural analgesia/anaesthesia: systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Epidural anaesthesia is used extensively for cardiothoracic and vascular surgery in some centres, but not in others, with argument over the safety of the technique in patients who are usually extensively anticoagulated before, during, and after surgery. The principle concern is bleeding in the epidural space, leading to transient or persistent neurological problems. METHODS: We performed an extensive systematic review to find published cohorts of use of epidural catheters during vascular, cardiac, and thoracic surgery, using electronic searching, hand searching, and reference lists of retrieved articles. RESULTS: Twelve studies included 14,105 patients, of whom 5,026 (36%) had vascular surgery, 4,971 (35%) cardiac surgery, and 4,108 (29%) thoracic surgery. There were no cases of epidural haematoma, giving maximum risks following epidural anaesthesia in cardiac, thoracic, and vascular surgery of 1 in 1,700, 1 in 1,400 and 1 in 1,700 respectively. In all these surgery types combined the maximum expected rate would be 1 in 4,700. In all these patients combined there were eight cases of transient neurological injury, a rate of 1 in 1,700 (95% confidence interval 1 in 3,300 to 1 in 850). There were no cases of persistent neurological injury (maximum expected rate 1 in 4,600). CONCLUSION: These estimates for cardiothoracic epidural anaesthesia should be the worst case. Limitations are inadequate denominators for different types of surgery in anticoagulated cardiothoracic or vascular patients more at risk of bleeding.