Background: Epidural anesthesia is a useful tool for postoperative pain control. However, inappropriate fixing of the catheter not only hinders the analgesic effect, but could lead to serious accidents as a result of the untoward removal of the epidural catheter.
Methods: In our hospital, in order to reduce the removal of catheter, we introduced a new method of fixing by Steri-StripTM from fiscal 2011.
Results: We compared 2337 cases of epidural use for general anesthesia in one fiscal year of 2010. In fiscal year 2011, 2500 examples were examined backward.
Conclusions: The group using the Steri-Strip, was able to significantly reduce the untoward removal (P = 0.002).