“How long do you have to lay flat after spinal anesthesia?”
I am a 28 year old male. I want to know how long do you have to lay flat after spinal anesthesia?
2 Answers
You do not need to lay flat after a spinal anesthetic. Spinal anesthetics differ from a "Spinal tap" for diagnostic purposes. Spinal taps for diagnosis use a fairly large needle and involve removing spinal fluid for testing. Patients are advised to lay flat after that for a few hours to give their body time to manufacture more cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to replace what was removed. The purpose for laying flat is to avoid a severe headache from the loss of CSF. In a spinal anesthetic, a very small specially designed needle is used and no CSF is lost. Rather a small amount of local anesthetic is placed into the CSF. The risk of headache is very small, so patients do not need to lay flat.
The needles used today are extremely fine, and because of that, you don’t need to lay flat for more than six hours at the very most. Young patients like you, probably 2 to 4 hours max.
