Impact of Drug Delivery Systems on Neuraxial Labor Analgesia

Neuraxial analgesia for the treatment of labor pain has proven to be efficacious and safe over the past few decades. At present, several new strategies are being developed to further enhance pain relief and maternal satisfaction of our parturients while providing them with greater autonomy over their own analgesic regimen. The recent years have witnessed the development of new infusion pumps that are more interactive, flexible and allow titration of analgesia according to an individual parturient’s need for pain relief as labor progresses. In this review, we examine the several strategies for maintenance of neuraxial labor analgesia with a focus on the impact of drug delivery systems in the past, present and future. © 2013, Springer Science + Business Media New York.