Local and regional anesthesia

Local and regional anesthetic techniques are used to prevent or relieve pain. They can be used alone, or in combination with sedatives, analgesics, or general anesthetics as past of a multimodal pain management strategy. Pharmacologic properties of local anesthetics differ, and drugs are selected for clinical use based on these properties. Local anesthetics are administered to dogs and cats by a variety of routes, including topical, local infiltration, selective neural, regional, epidural, and intrathecal. This article reviews the pharmacology of local anesthetics and describes local and regional anesthetic techniques used in dogs and cats.