Ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane block for postoperative analgesia after varicocelectomy operations

Mahmoud, Wael Alham; Hassan, Ahmed Hamody; Mohamed, Khald Abdelfattah; Rezk, Ghada Abd EL Gaber

doi:10.21608/smj.2017.52551

Ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane block for postoperative analgesia after varicocelectomy operations

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of Anesthesia and Surgical Intensive Care, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag University

² Department of anesthesia and ICU, Sohag University, sohag, Egypt.

³ Department of, Anesthesia and intensive care, Fuclty of Medicine, Sohag University.

10.21608/smj.2017.52551

Abstract

To assess the efficacy of transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block as a postoperative analgesic effectiveness. Thirty-three consecutive male patients undergoing retroperitoneal varicocele repair (Palomo technique) were enrolled in this study. Patients were randomly allocated to undergo ultrasound-guided TAP block anesthesia (case group), or conventional spinal anesthesia (control group), rescue analgesia need, nausea, and satisfaction at different time-points (6, 12, and 24 h after surgery). The post-operative evaluation, patients enrolled in the case group expressed significantly less pain on VAS score at rest and on movement at 6 (p = 0.001 and p = 0.001) and at 12 h (p = 0.004 and p = 0.01). Moreover, the need of rescue analgesia resulted significantly higher in the control group (p = 0.03). This is the first study showing that TAP block could be employed as an effective and feasible anesthesia method for the retroperitoneal varicocelectomy. Moreover, our results demonstrate that this method is more effective than spinal anesthesia in the pain control after varicocele repair.

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