Regional versus general anesthesia for bone marrow harvesting

Abstract Study Objective : To compare regional versus general anesthesia for bone marrow harvesting. Design : Retrospective study. Setting : Inpatients at a bone marrow transplantation unit of a university medical center. Patients : One hundred sixty-two donors: 63 healthy patients donating heterologous marrow, 99 patients donating autologous marrow. Interventions : Anesthesia and patient charts from 1986 to 1990 were reviewed. Measurements and Main Results : Regionally anesthetized patients required less transfused blood in the perioperative period, even though more bone marrow was aspirated. This group also required less postoperative analgesia. We found no difference between the groups with regard to length of hospitalization or amount of colloid required in the perioperative period. Conclusions : Our data suggest that both modes of anesthesia can be safely administered. Further investigations should be carried out to determine whether the two types of anesthesia, regional and general, are equivalent.