COMFORTABLE LABOR WITH INTRATHECAL NARCOTICS

Aggressive pursuit of high-quality health care had guided the Health S ervice of the United States Army to establish a labor analgesia progra m within its hospitals. A dedicated Labor Epidural Service can be quit e expensive, especially from the manpower standpoint. Therefore, the A nesthesia Service at Reynolds Army Community Hospital, Fort Sill, Okla homa, implemented a program of intrathecal narcotic injection as an al ternative to costly labor epidural analgesia, After reviewing a patien t fact sheet, 150 laboring patients volunteered for labor intrathecal analgesia (LIA). Once active labor began, the patient received intrath ecal morphine (0.25 mg) and fentanyl (25 mu g). The pain level before and after the LIA was evaluated by the visual analog schedule method. At 2 weeks follow-up the intrathecal narcotic-assisted labor was subje ctively reported by the patients. Ninety-four percent of the patients agreed that the LIA worked well and that they would do it again. LIA w as found to be a well-accepted, cost-saving, very effective approach t o labor analgesia.