The effect of bupivacaine on compound action potential parameters of sciatic nerve fibers

The aim of this study was to document the effects of the local anesthetic agent bupivacaine on individual fibers of peripheral nerve. To accomplish this objective, compound action potentials (CAPs) were recorded from isolated frog sciatic nerves treated with bupivacaine for seven individual concentration levels. Numerical and fast Fourier transform (FFT) analysis were performed on these recordings. The areas, latency periods, maximum and minimum derivatives, and power spectrums of the CAPs were computed. The results show that the area and the absolute values of maximum and minimum derivatives decrease linearly as bupivacaine concentration increases. The power spectrum of the CAPs, which resides in the 0-1000 Hz interval, initially shifts to higher frequencies then returns to lower frequency region again with increasing bupivacaine concentration. Due to this result, it is thought that bupivacaine inhibits nerve fibers in a dose-dependent manner. It primarily affects the fibers having the least myelin sheets (motor fibers), then it begins to depress the fast conducting (neurosensorial) fibers as the bupivacaine concentration increases, and finally blocks the unmyelinated C-fibers.