Abstract

This workshop is intended for the clinicians who want to improve their skills in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia and want to expand their knowledge and/or incorporate a variety of nerve blocks into their practice. The success of real-time, ultrasound-guided insertion of needles for regional anesthetic administration and peripheral and central vascular line insertion over all other methods of identifying/verifying the anatomical target prior to cannulation and/or injection has been documented repeatedly through recent years. Ultrasound offers a non-invasive, low risk safety factor whose benefits to quality of care, reduction in complications (both realized and expected), and the relative improvement in patient confidence and satisfaction with the techniques has heralded the techniques as standard-of-care for the future, especially in challenging patients in the hands of inexperienced or infrequent users. In fact, it has been suggested that morbidity resulting from insertion may be legally indefensible in the absence of the use of these devices.