Objective: To investigate the efficacy and safety of levobupivacaine, a new local anaesthetic associated with a low frequency of toxicity in an everyday clinical practice. Design: Open-label prospective questionnaire survey. Setting: Departments of anaesthesiology in 57 hospitals in the Czech Republic. Material and Methods: 3325 patients aged 2–97 years operated in regional or combined anaesthesia with levobupivacaine or with an obstetric analgesia between May and December 2003. Participating anaesthesiologists filled data in data collection sheets. Reported data were centrally loaded into the NORA database and processed. The efficacy of levobupivacaine was evaluated by the quality of a sensory and the intensity of a motor blockade, the safety of levobupivacaine by untoward side effects, the need to stop further administration of the drug, the frequency of technical problems was also noted. Results: The levobupivacaine administration (mostly 0,5%) resulted in an excellent or satisfactory quality of the sensory anaesthesia in 97.3% of cases, the degree of a motor block relied on the type of block used, the spinal anaesthesia produced the complete motor block in 73.9% of cases, while a single-shot epidural anaesthesia produced most frequently a moderate motor block and the continuous epidural anaesthesia affected the motor function in a minimal way only. Untoward side effects, mainly hypotension and bradycardia, occurred in 200 patients (6%), most frequently in a single-shot epidural anaesthesia (7.4%), less in spinal anaesthesia (6.7%) rarely in peripheral nerve blocks on the extremities. The levobupivacaine administration had to be stopped in 5 patients (0.15%). Conclusion: Levobupivacaine is an effective and safe drug for both central and peripheral nerve blocks in everyday clinical practice.

        Key words: local anaesthesia – local anaesthetics – levobupivacaine – efficacy – safety