Role of sensory innervation variations for wrist block anesthesia

Background. A variety of anesthesia techniques for hand surgery have been s uggested. Methods. Cases of single peripheral nerve block and incomplete wrist block failures are analyzed and compared with a group of patients with complete w rist block. Results. According to the results of our study, in 825 cases there was a 15 % rate of documented failures of incomplete wrist block, most probably due to anomalous sensory innervation. Conclusions. This clinical observation is in agreement with many published studies on neural anatomy and supports the use of complete wrist block for hand surgery. (C) 2001 IMSS. Published by Elsevier Science Inc.