Thank goodness for William Morton and Horace Wells- pioneers in anesthesia. Anesthesia has come a long way since them and there is even a professional medical society for OB anesthesia called SOAP. Today, August 07, 2025, there is a new Clinical Expert Series which was just released in the Green Journal. That publication (which is ahead of print) is titled, Key Management Considerations in Obstetric Anesthesiology, is our episode focus. Can you safely have an epidural placed if the patient has platelets under 100K? Can labor epidurals cause pyrexia alone? Do labor epidurals slow labor? Listen in for details.

1. Clinical Expert Series, Key Management Considerations in Obstetric Anesthesiology. Obstet Gynecol; ePub 08/07/2025.

2. ACOG PB 2017; 2019

3. Adams AK. Tarnished Idol: William Thomas Green Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia. J R Soc Med. 2002 May;95(5):266–7. PMCID: PMC1279690.

4. Hegvik, Tor-Arne et al. Labor epidural analgesia and subsequent risk of offspring autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a cross-national cohort study of 4.5 million individuals and their siblings.

American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Volume 228(2): 233.e1 - 233.e12

5. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/04/Epidural-use-at-birth-not-linked-to-autism-risk-study-finds.html