Clinical Trial: Nociception Level Index (NOL Index) for Obstetrical Pain Assessment Under Epidural Analgesia.

Study Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Recruit Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL




Official Title: The Interest of the Nociception Index (Nociception Level Index, NOL Index) for the Evaluation of Obstetric Pain Under Epidural Analgesia: a Prospective Pilot Study

Brief Summary:

Pain has been defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage".
Labour pain is the pain experienced during labour and childbirth and it's characterised by nociceptive pain accompanied by sympathetic activation.

Since more than fifty years, the development of hospital obstetric assistance for labour, allowed the implementation of the pain relief culture in the demanding parturients population.

The ideal labour analgesic technique should provide consistent pain relief at any stage of labour, have a long duration of action, while being safe both for the mother and the foetus.
It should also anticipate undesirable side effects, such as motor block.

The current gold standard for obstetric analgesia is the lumbar epidural technique using the administration of local anesthetics combined with opioids.
However, the best administration mode is currently under debate, the main interest being the local anesthetic sparing responsible for various maternal side effects and the quality of maternal analgesia.

Despite the intense research in the field, the evaluation of the labour pain remains difficult as performed by the midwife and the anesthesiologist based on the patient's behaviour and her subjective self-assessment.

The PMD100� (Medasense Biometrics Ltd., Ramat Yishai, Israel) is a non-invasive multiparametric nociception monitoring that has proved its interest in the intraoperative evaluation of patient's physiological response to pain under general anesthesia, using the NOL index variation.
Nonetheless, it has been barely investigated in patients receiving locoregional anesthesia and never in the context of obstetrical pain.

The investigators support the idea that the NOL index monitoring could allow us to assess the degree of nociceptive stimulation related to obstetric labour and its variation under epidural analgesia, as well as to compare the efficacy of sensitive block using different epidural administration modes.

The aim of this pilot study is to evaluate the NOL Index variation during labour pain management with epidural analgesia.

The investigators will focus on the evaluation of analgesia in relation with the self-reported pain intensity, and secondly, the characteristics of the sensory block, the hemodynamic variables and side effects.