Lumbar epidural anaesthesia (Pagés's metameric anaesthesia)
Anestesia epidural lumbar (anestesia metamérica de Pagés)
- Date
- 1921 · confidence high
- Place
- Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain
- Credited to
- Fidel Pagés Miravé
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
The military surgeon Fidel Pagés published in 1921 “metameric anaesthesia”: injection of anaesthetic into the lumbar epidural space, through the ligamentum flavum, to block the nerves of one body segment in abdominal surgery. It is the technique of present-day epidural anaesthesia.
Sicard and Cathelin had used the caudal epidural route in 1901; Pagés described the lumbar route. He died in an accident in 1923, and his work was forgotten outside the Spanish-speaking world until Dogliotti rediscovered it.
What it led to
- Dogliotti's popularisation of the technique (1931)
- epidural analgesia in labour
- neuraxial blocks in modern anaesthesia