Dr. Fatima Estrada, MD

Local Anesthesia

for Vaginal Lacerations

The prevalence of perineal lacerations is more than 75% of all vaginal deliveries. The repair of such lacerations in the institution is usually done using lidocaine for non-epiduralized patients versus no local injection in patients with a pre-existing epidural analgesia. The prevalence of epidural analgesia use among women who underwent vaginal delivery in cross-sectional study of over 2 million deliveries in the United States was 71.1%. Once the analgesic effect of the epidural analgesia fades, the laceration may cause uncontrolled postpartum pain which can affect both the physical and mental recovery period, extend hospital stays, and increase the potential for serious adverse reactions with pain medications. The research hypothesis of this study is that adding a locally injected analgesic, which will take effect once the epidural analgesia fades, may alleviate perineal pain and improve women's overall well-being and satisfaction. This is a superiority two-arm, quadruple-blinded, prospective randomized controlled trial with the objective to determine if prolonged analgesia and higher rate of maternal satisfaction are found when bupivacaine with epinephrine infiltration is used for perineal repair as compared to sham injection in patients with pre-existing effective epidural analgesia at time of perineal laceration repair. Women with a working epidural analgesia, and status post a vaginal delivery involving a second-degree laceration will be invited to participate. Women in the local anesthesia (LA) arm will get a LA injected to the laceration and women in the sham arm will get an injection with saline. The differences in perineal pain between the groups will be evaluated at time of the first analgesic (TFA) demand, maternal satisfaction at 24 hours, and visual analog scale (VAS) pain score.