The mid‐point transverse process to pleura ( <scp>MTP</scp> ) block: a new end‐point for thoracic paravertebral block
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Current descriptions of thoracic paravertebral block techniques require the needle tip to be anterior to the superior costotransverse ligament. We hypothesised that an injection point midway between the posterior border of the transverse process and the pleura would result in spread to the paravertebral space. We completed bilateral injections of 5 ml methylene blue 0.2% midway between the posterior border of the transverse process and the pleura at T2, T4, T6, T8 and T10 in three unembalmed cadavers. The presence of methylene blue dye at the nerve root in the paravertebral space, the corresponding intercostal nerve and sympathetic chain at the level of injection, and at additional levels, was examined. We identified the superior costotransverse ligament, pleural displacement and spread to the erector spinae plane. We describe two case reports using this technique in patients. Our cadaver results and clinical cases demonstrate that, with the exception of cadaver 1, an injection point midway between the posterior border of the transverse process and pleura consistently achieved spread of dye at least to the paravertebral space at the level of injection, and frequently to adjacent levels. This may be a plausible explanation for the landmark technique's inability to reliably achieve a multilevel block. We describe a new ultrasound-guided technique for a single level paravertebral block.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".