What are the complications of regional anaesthesia?

like every anaesthetic and every surgical technique, regional anaesthesia has particular complications. The nub of it is that regional anaesthesia depends upon the careful placement of a local anaesthetic drug near a nerve or near nerves in the back. That involves putting a needle near a nerve. Now if you put a needle near a nerve, there's a chance that you can go far enough to hit the nerve and bruise the nerve. If you bruise a nerve, it can cause temporary abnormality of function of the nerve, which you as a patient probably noticed as weakness or numbness or altered sensation in the part of the body that was blocked. 98% of this nerve bruising gets better in a few weeks, up to 12 weeks, but very occasionally, probably talking about less than 1 in 10,000 patients, there can be nerve damage which can last for longer. Now having said that, you must appreciate that surgeons damage nerves as well, so if you look at an operation on the shoulder, let's say a joint replacement on the shoulder, the chance of permanent nerve damage from the anaesthetist may be one in five to ten thousand, from the surgeon it's about one to two in a hundred. So yes, there are complications to regional anaesthesia but they must be set into context of the complications of general anaesthesia and the complications of surgery as a whole and your anaesthetist will talk to you before the operation when he or she gives you the options for anaesthesia and will talk to you about the benefits and the complications of both regional and general anaesthesia.