Article Text
Abstract
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Background and Aims Despite of similar postoperative pain control and less adverse effects, thoracic paravertebral block (TPVB) for thoracotomy and video assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) isn’t as widespread as thoracic epidural anesthesia (TEA). To standardize clinical practice in our institution, we conducted a retrospective observational study to compare postoperative pain control after VATS.
Methods We performed a retrospective cohort analysis of patients who were undergoing VATS oncological lung surgery with regional anesthesia (TEA or TPVB) during 2021. Significant pain was considered if a value ≥3 was recorded with the verbal numeric scale (VNS) at 12, 24 and 48 hours (h) after surgery. The need for rescue analgesia at those times was also registered. A Chi Square test was used to compare both groups.
Results 44 patients were included in the study, 22 in each group (continuous TEA vs. single shot TPVB at two thoracic levels). Patients at both groups had similar VNS pain values and need for analgesia rescue at 12, 24 and 48h with no statistically significant differences between them (VNS 12h (p=0.275), 24h (p=0.3834), 48h (p=0.275).
Conclusions Our findings are in line with recent literature, showing that TEA and TPVB may be equivalent effective regional analgesia techniques in VATS in terms of postoperative pain control. Nevertheless, differences may have not been found due to sample limitation. Adverse effects have not been analyzed due to incomplete data.
Attachment Aprov_P23_055.pdf