A revisit of transthecal digital block and traditional digital block for anesthesia of the finger

Background: finger injuries are very common and the majority can be treated under digital block anesthesia. traditionaldigital block is one of the most commonly performed blocks by care providers in several medical fields. there isanother less known method, transthecal (pulley) block, in which local anesthesia is injected into the flexor tendonsheath.methods; a randomized clinical trial was performed to compare the transthecal (pulley) and traditional digital blockwith regard to the length of anesthesia and the need for another anesthetic method (due to insufficient anesthesia) as asupplement. we divided 100 patients who needed digital block due to finger injury, into two groups randomly. in eachgroup the patients were anesthetized either by traditional or transthecal digital block. all blocks were performed by thesame investigator.results: mean length of anesthesia was 34.2 minutes in the transthecal digital block method versus 33.8 minutes in thetraditional digital block method (p(greater than)0.05). a repeated injection or local infiltration as a supplement was necessary onlyin 5 instances in the traditional digital block method (p(less than)0.05).conclusions: regarding fewer injections and reduced amounts of lidocaine, absence of neurovascular bundles damageand comparable length of anesthesia and no need to supplemental anesthesia, transthecal digital block is an appropriatealternative to traditional digital block.