Incidents in obstetric anaesthesia and analgesia: An analysis of 5000 AIMSreports

We aimed to explore the first 5000 incidents reported to the Australian Inc ident Monitoring Study (AIMS) involving anaesthesia for obstetric patients and found 203 such incidents. Analysis and classification identified seven main incident groups; regional anaesthetic techniques (33%), anaesthetic eq uipment problems (13%), "wrong drug" errors (20%), other drug-related probl ems (16%), difficult/failed intubation (9%), problems with the endotracheal tube (9%) and other problems (10%). When compared to the incidents in the main database, obstetric cases were found to be over-represented with respe ct to accidental dural puncture, post dural puncture headache failed intuba tion in emergency situations and the incidence of certain types of "wrong d rug" error: The implications of these reports regarding safe practice of ob stetric anaesthesia are discussed.