Evaluation of ropivacaine combined with dexmedetomidine versus ropivacaine alone for epidural anesthesia

Background: Ropivacaine is considered the most commonly used for epidural anesthesia. We compared the efficiency and safety of ropivacaine alone (R group) and ropivacaine combined with dexmedetomidine (RD group). Method: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Ovid Medline, the Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, and ScienceDirect were searched. We considered sensory and motor block, duration of anesthesia, time to rescue, hemodynamics, and adverse effects as the primary endpoints. Results: Eleven randomized controlled trials were included with 337 patients in the R group and 336 patients in the RD group. The RD group had a shorter time to onset of sensory (mean difference [MD]: 3.97 [1.90–6.04] minutes; P = .0002) and motor (MD: 2.43 [0.70–4.16] minutes; P = .006) block and a longer duration of anesthesia (MD: -164.17 [-294.43 to -33.91]; P = .01) than the R group. Comparison of the time to rescue between the groups showed no significant difference (MD: -119.01[-254.47–16.46] minutes; P = 0.09). The R group showed more stable hemodynamics than the RD group in heart rate and arterial pressure at 10 minutes. The R group had a lower incidence of bradycardia and a higher incidence of shivering than the RD group. Conclusion: RD may be a more suitable choice for epidural anesthesia with better anesthetic outcomes than R alone. However, the safety of the combination must be carefully assessed.