Mnemonic for colour coding of spinal needles

History of spinal needles

Spinal anaesthesia was first performed by Leonard Corning  in 1885 when he accidentally breached the  dura whilst  investigating the effects of cocaine on the spinal nerves of  dogs.

Soon after, Quincke described a lumbar puncture  technique to treat the symptoms  of raised intracranial  pressure using a sharp, bevelled needle that cut through  the dura. 

It was Augustus Bier though, in 1898, who first  experimented with spinal anaesthesia using cocaine on  humans through what he described as a ‘Quincke needle’.

What are spinal needles?

A spinal needle is  a long needle usually 10 cm with a stylet. A transparent hub to detect the flow of CSF.The standard spinal needle consists of the following three parts: 

1.  A hub that is fused to a cannula with a point,  
2. A fitted removable stylet that occludes the distal lumen  
3. And point of the cannula.

 

Sizes of spinal needles: 

Spinal needles are carefully manufactured without surface  irregularities and with a tight fitting removable stylet that  completely occludes the needle lumen.

A wide variety of  sizes with different applications are available  from 16 gauge  to 30 gauge.

Uses of spinal needles:

They are used in:

1. Spinal anaesthesia.
2. Lumbar puncture for diagnostic sampling of CSF.
3. Therapeutic drainage of CSF.
4. Intrathecal chemotherapy

Types of spinal needles:

They are divide dinto the following 2 groups

1. sharp/cutting tiped

 This includes the quincke needle which is  a sharp cutting needle with end injection

  2. Blunt tip or pencil-point needles 

This includes the following two types of needles 

• Whitacre – rectangular point with side injection 
•  Sprotte –rounded point with long side opening

As you can see in the picture below 

Mnemonic for color coding of spinal needles

Now we are going to talk about the mnemonic for color coding of spinal needles as above was just an introduciton to the spinal needles which  was necessary to recall or remind your knowldege  about spinal needles so here is the mnemonic  to understand the mnemonic only focus on the highlited and underlined words in the following sentence and the word Bancha is a japanese green tea so all other words are relating to the japanes tea 


With  Pink Cream & Yellow Garlic Blakish Blue medium cuP Of Bancha

Words	Color code	Gauges
With	White	16
Pink	Pink	18
Cream &	Cream	19
Yellow	Yellow	20
Garlic	Green	21
Blackish	Black	22
Blue	Blue	23
medium cuP	Medium purple	24
Of	Orange	25
Bancha	Brown	26

Following are some colours of needles