Background and Aims Chronic pain management has been challenging during the pandemic, as all non-urgent healthcare services, were imposed, leading to reduction or interruption of all outpatient and elective interventional procedures. We describe our experience regarding the use of Peripheral Nerve Blocks (PNBs) in the Outpatient Pain Clinic of UHL during 2021.

Methods A retrospective analysis of our database was performed. All patients who were treated with PNBs under ultrasound guidance were eligible. The cause of chronic pain, the type of PNB and the improvement of pain measured by Pain Outcomes Questionnaire (POQ) were recorded.

Results Sixteen patients were treated with PNBs in 2021. Five patients were treated for lower back pain, one for coccydynia, one for shoulder pain, two for chronic postoperative pain after total knee replacement, two after inguinal hernia repair and one after upper extremity fracture, one for lower extremity complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) and one for red ear syndrome. The blocks that were used are sacroiliac joint block, coccygeal nerve block, interscalene block, the combination of adductor canal and IPACK, the combination of ilioinguinal and ilio-hypogastric blocks and the stellate ganglion block, Bier’s block and the greater auricular nerve block respectively. Based on the POQ, in all patients the pain was reduced by 20 – 60%.

Conclusions During the challenging time of the pandemic the Outpatient Pain Clinic of our Hospital treated drug-resistant patients with PNBs in terms of escalation of the multimodal pain approach.