1. Introduction
postoperative pain, postoperative nausea and vomiting, pain
Academic Editor: Alessandro VittoriPatients undergoing abdominal oncologic surgical procedures require particular surgical and anesthesiologic considerations. Traditional pain management, such as opiate treatment, continuous epidural analgesia, and non-opioid drugs, may have serious side effects in this patient population. We evaluated erector spinae plane (ESP) blocks for postoperative pain management following elective oncologic abdominal surgeries. In this single-center, prospective, and randomized study, we recruited 100 patients who underwent elective oncological abdominal surgery between December 2020 and January 2022 at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer Sheva, Israel. We compared postoperative pain levels in patients who were treated with a preincisional ESP block in addition to traditional pain management with intravenous opioids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and acetaminophen, compared to patients who were only given traditional pain management (control). Patients who were treated with a preincisional ESP block demonstrated significantly lower Visual Analog Scale scores at 60 minutes and 4, 8, and 12 hours following the surgery, compared to the control group (Regional anesthesia complements and enhances multimodal analgesia for different types of abdominal surgery, with its role increasingly recognized [However, traditional pain management in these patients, including opiate treatment, continuous epidural analgesia, and non-opioid drugs, may have serious side effects [The erector spinae plane (ESP) block is one of the newest techniques to be explored [In this prospective study, we performed ESP blocks for postoperative pain management for different types of elective oncologic abdominal surgeries. We compared two groups of patients to evaluate the effects of incorporating a preincisional ESP block alongside traditional pain management using intravenous opioids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Specifically, we examined the postoperative pain level and incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting in these groups. One group received both the ESP block and traditional pain management, while the other (control) group received only traditional pain management.