Background and Aims The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of US-guided truncal blocks (TAP and QL) in children undergoing appendectomy.

Methods After approval by the ethics committee we conducted a retrospective study including 204 paediatric patients underwent for appendectomy from April 2020 to April 2021. A group ‘GA’ received general anaesthesia alone (n=142), a group ‘GA+RA’ received GA with ultrasound-guided TAP or QL blocks (n=62). We compared total surgical and anaesthesia time, the needs in opioids intraoperatively, non-opioid analgesia and fluid therapy first 5 days postoperatively, incidences of PONV, duration of the body temperature reaction, length of hospital stay (LOS), using Mann-Whithney U-test, chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests.

Results Patients in both groups were comparable in age, body weight, ASA status. Total surgical time including anaesthesia was longer in ‘GA+RA’ group [1,63(0,6) vs 1,34(0,6) hours, p<0,001]. Patients in ‘GA+RA’ needed significantly less doses of phentanyl intraoperatively [4,5(2,4) vs 7,0(3,6) mkg/kg/h, p<0,001], despite of that, there was no difference in incidences of PONV between groups. 34% of patients in ‘GA+RA’ and 58% of patients in ‘GA’ needed additional analgesia in the end of surgery (p=0,003), but needs in non-opioid analgesia in 1–5 days after surgery were comparable. We didn’t observe differences in duration of temperature reaction, fluid therapy, as well as in LOS after surgery.

Conclusions Results of our study suggest that combined general anaesthesia with truncal blocks such as TAP or QL for appendectomy in children may lengthen operative time, reduce the needs in analgesics, but do not effect on general outcomes.