Patient-controlled spinal analgesia for labour and caesarean delivery

Continuous spinal anasthesia has not been widely used in Australia. Epidura l anaesthesia is often inadequate in patients with previous spinal surgery, as distribution of local anaesthetic in the epidural space is unpredictabl e. Two cases are presented where continuous spinal anaesthesia enabled sati sfactory analgesia ann anaesthesia to be obtained for labour and caesarean delivery respectively.