Statistical analysis
pain
The mean postoperative one-hour pain scores on VAS and the rates of rescue analgesic use of 20 patients who underwent surgery prior to the study were determined. Based on the values obtained, it was determined that there should be 35 patients in each group, with a reduction in the pain scale score of 33% following LTAP block, at a significance level of 5% and a statistical power of 80%. In order to account for potential exclusions following randomization, this study included 40 patients per group. All patients gave informed consent. G*Power software was used to for power analysis.The consistency of normally-distributed continuous variables was examined with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Continuous variables were presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD) or median (interquartile range [IQR]). If the variables followed a normal distribution, analysis of variance was carried out to make comparisons among groups; otherwise, the Kruskal-Wallis test was considered with the Dunn-Bonferroni test for pairwise comparisons. To compare VAS scores, the one-hour VAS scores were compared among groups; the difference in the VAS scores measured at 3-, 6-, 12-, and 24 hours compared to one-hour measurement was calculated; and these measurements were compared. In this way, the change in the scores (∆) obtained in the relevant periods according to the one-hour measurement was examined. Categorical variables are presented as numbers and precentages values and compared among groups using the Chi-squared or Fisher-Freeman-Halenda test. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 25.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) was used for the statistical analyses.