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Background Although pain after laparoscopic surgery is less compared with open cholecystectomy, pain management in the first 24 to 72 h in the postoperative period is tricky and most patients complain of pain with cough, breathing and mobilization during the initial hours. The aim of this study was to evaluate the most efficacious route of analgesia in patients following laparoscopic cholecystectomy by comparing port-site wound infiltration, intraperitoneal infiltration and subcostal transversus abdominis plane block in providing post-operative analgesia following laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Methods This was an observational study performed on patients who underwent elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy at a tertiary care hospital in Mangalore. Group A received bupivacaine instilled in gallbladder fossa after removal of gall bladder before closure. Group B received Bupivacaine as an infiltration into the skin incision site (fascia, muscle, preperitoneal space) at each of the four port sites based on the length of the skin incision before closure. Group C received bupivacaine as subcostal transversus abdominis plane block under ultrasound guidance immediately postclosure. Collected data was entered in Microsoft Excel 2007 and analyzed using SPSS version 22.0 to find frequency, Mean and SD. Significance was assessed using Kruskal–Wallis test, χ 2 test and ANOVA for repeated measures. Results Hemodynamic parameters, i.e. the heart rate and mean arterial pressure were comparable at the end of 2 h and 4 h. At 6 and 8 h postoperatively however, visual analog scale was significantly better in group C compared with groups A and B. Time until the first analgesic request in group C was 359.35±45.55 min which was significantly lesser than the other two groups. Only three patients from group B had shoulder tip pain which was not seen in the other two groups. Conclusion Infiltration of bupivacaine at port sites is helpful in providing effective analgesia for upto 2 h post operatively whereas intraperitoneal instillation is both effective at meeting analgesic requirements as well as preventing shoulder tip pain. However, the substantial finding of our study is in providing further evidence to existing data that Subcostal transversus abdominis plane block can produce effective analgesia for laparoscopic cholecystectomy, effectively reduces analgesic requirement, and ensures faster recovery.
D’Cunha et al. (Mon,) studied this question.