You should seek the advice of your veterinarian if your pet is ill as only he or she can correctly advise on the diagnosis and recommend the treatment that is most appropriate for your pet.

Epidural pain relief is used very frequently in human medicine - particularly during child birth. It is also used sometimes in veterinary patients.

An "epidural" is a procedure that provides pain relief by injecting a local anaesthetic pain killer (called an analgesic) into the space surrounding the spinal cord. This effectively blocks all the nerves leaving the spine below the point at which it is injected. So nerve transmissions - including those that carry pain sensation - stop functioning. The effect is pain relief and paralysis of the areas supplied by the nerves.

This procedure is only used occasionally in small animal practice, but it is used often in farm animals. Once the area is anaesthetised it is possible to perform minor and even major surgical techniques under epidural analgesia and, just as in humans, caesarian sections are often performed in cattle and sheep using this technique.

Updated October 2013