Why the study?
Does an epidural containing a local anesthetic improve postoperative gastrointestinal transit and pain compared to opioid-based regimens in patients after abdominal surgery?
Does an epidural containing a local anesthetic improve postoperative gastrointestinal transit and pain compared to opioid-based regimens in patients after abdominal surgery?
Epidural local anesthetics accelerate gastrointestinal transit and reduce pain after abdominal surgery compared to opioid-based regimens.
Supports epidural local anesthetics over opioids for faster GI recovery and analgesia after abdominal surgery; reinforces Level 1 evidence for enhanced-recovery protocols.
An epidural containing a local anesthetic, with or without the addition of an opioid, accelerates the return of the gastrointestinal transit (high quality of evidence). An epidural containing a local anesthetic with an opioid decreases pain after an abdominal surgery (moderate quality of evidence). An epidural containing a local anesthetic does not affect the incidence of vomiting or anastomotic leak (low quality of evidence). For an open surgery, an epidural containing a local anesthetic would reduce the length of hospital stay (very low quality of evidence).
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Guay et al. (2016) studied this question.
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