Analgesic Efficacy of Ultrasound-Guided Erector Spinae Plane Block versus Transversus Abdominis Plane Block for Post-Operative Pain Relief in Patients Scheduled for Abdominal Surgeries

Background: Abdominal surgeries have been mostly done as open surgeries for several decades. But this concept has been changed in the recent two decades and shifted towards closed techniques. Thus, led to an adjustment of pain relief techniques and the development of new local or regional analgesic techniques. Objective: To compare between the efficacy of erector spinae plane block and transversus abdominis plane block, for postoperative pain relief in adult patients scheduled for abdominal surgeries. Patients and Methods: This study is a comparative study that compares between two equal groups undergoing various abdominal surgeries: Group A is subjected to ultrasound guided ESP block and group B is subjected to ultrasound guided TAP block. Results: No significant difference in age of the patients among the two groups. Visual analogue scale was slightly higher in group B than group A, but not significantly different. The total preoperative morphine consumption along the first 24 hours was insignificantly different between the two groups. Duration of surgery, postoperative sedation score, and the incidence of adverse outcomes all of them were insignificantly different between the two groups. Hemodynamic changes in the form of mean arterial blood pressure and heart rate showed no significant difference between the two groups.Conclusion: The ESP block has a more analgesic effect, a longer duration of postoperative pain relief, delays the time to first requirement for analgesia, and reduces opioid consumption when compared with the TAP block and can be used in multimodal analgesia and opioid sparing regimens after abdominal surgeries.