Limitations
ESPB, anxiety, pain
This study has some limitations. First of all, a single-center planned study may not shed light on the general population for a center where very intensive thoracic surgery cases are performed. Secondly, the application was performed under general anesthesia just before the surgery in order to limit the anxiety and pain that may develop due to the block application. Therefore, the preoperative block level could not be evaluated. Third, a single injection block was applied instead of catheter application in patients. This situation could interrupt the long-term analgesia treatment that can be delivered local anesthetic by the catheter. However, considering that both multimodal analgesia application and ESPB provide long-term analgesia even if it is a single injection, we believe that an analgesic effect can be achieved. Finally, only 30 ml of local anesthetic and 20 ml of local anesthetic volumes were used for ESPB in the present study. Prospective randomized studies involving various volumes of local anesthetic may further elucidate the volume effect in ESPB.