Dr. Lauren Ienello, Veterinary Medical Center resident with the comparative anesthesia service, has been named a recipient of the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia (ACVAA) Resident Abstract Award. 

The award recognizes ACVAA abstracts that were presented at the IVECCS Symposium in Nashville on Sept. 12, 2021. Ienello was selected as the large animal winner for her abstract: 
“Ultrasound-guided rectus sheath block in fresh porcine cadavers: technique description and effect of two injectate volumes.” 

Ienello told the Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia Podcast that the idea for her research developed after observing an uptick in the number of pig patients requiring anesthesia for procedures. 

“Starting in 2016, we've essentially had a 10-fold increase in the number of pigs, and roughly one-fourth of those cases have been for abdominal procedures, so spays and things like umbilical hernia repairs,” Ienello says. 

Local anesthesia techniques in large animal species haven’t been as thoroughly explored as they have been in humans and small animals, so Ienello planned to research developing them for pigs involving the rectus sheath. The rectus sheath contains one muscle, and there is one of these muscles in each half of the abdomen, so the block is performed bilaterally. 

Ienello focused on investigating the use of a rectus sheath nerve block, a technique used to interrupt pain signals in the abdomen that has seen success in humans and other animal species, by testing two injection volumes of a medical dye in pig cadavers to measure a nerve block’s potential effectiveness in live swine. 

“We did find that the higher volume stained more nerves in four out of the 10 animals, whereas the low volume never stained more nerves than the high volume,” Ienello says. 

You can listen to Ienello discuss her abstract with host Dr. Ludovica Chiavaccini on the Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia Podcast by clicking here.