Patients undergoing abdominal oncologic
surgical procedures require particular surgical and anesthesiologic considerations. Traditional
pain management, such as
opiate treatment, continuous
epidural analgesia, and non-
opioid drugs, may have serious side effects in this patient population. We evaluated erector spinae plane (ESP) blocks for
postoperative pain management following elective oncologic abdominal surgeries. In this single-center, prospective, and randomized study, we recruited 100 patients who underwent elective oncological abdominal surgery between December 2020 and January 2022 at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer Sheva, Israel. We compared
postoperative pain levels in patients who were treated with a preincisional ESP block in addition to traditional
pain management with intravenous
opioids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (
NSAIDs), and
acetaminophen, compared to patients who were only given traditional
pain management (control). Patients who were treated with a preincisional ESP block demonstrated significantly lower Visual Analog Scale scores at 60 minutes and 4, 8, and 12 hours following the surgery, compared to the control group (p < 0.001). Accordingly, patients in the ESP group required less
morphine from 60 minutes to 12 hours after surgery, but they required increased non-
opioid postoperative
analgesia management at 4, 8, and 12 hours after surgery (p from 0.002 to <0.001) compared to the control group. In this study, we found ESP blocks to be a safe, technically simple, and effective treatment for
postoperative pain management after elective oncologic abdominal procedures.