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Day case surgery is becoming more and more important. In order to perform these services cost-efficiently it is of primary importance to ensure that procedures can be scheduled with the largest possible patient satisfaction. Up to now spinal anaesthesia was of little importance in day case surgery due to prolonged nerve block and negative side effects especially when using long acting local anaesthetics. Since prilocaine and 2-chloroprocaine, two short acting local anaesthetics with a known low incidence of side effects, were recently introduced into clinical practice a reevaluation of spinal anaesthesia in a day case setting according to EMB guidelines still has to be done., (Georg Thieme Verlag Stuttgart * New York.)

Combined spinal and epidural anaesthesia/analgesia is a method whereby drugs are applied intrathecally as a single dose and epidurally either continuously or intermittently via an epidural catheter. More than 50 years ago, first attempts were made to introduce this method into clinical practice but they found little general acceptance. Only during the last decades has tremendous progress been made in developing new, highly-sophisticated equipment: matching spinal and epidural needles and catheters, epidural needles with a separate conduit for the spinal needle or with an additional hole for the exit of the spinal needle as well as fixation devices for the spinal needle. A specific feature of the method is the only recently recognised epidural volume extension, which allows the use of low-dose drug combinations with sufficient analgetic properties but less cardiovascular compromise and fewer side-effects. This review describes the main and most important developmental steps and offers practical examples for its use in day-case surgery of the lower limb, in the "walking epidural" in obstetrics and in caesarean section. The method has become a valuable new tool in the armamentarium of the anaesthetist and part of daily routine in many clinics.