Enhanced Recovery After Lumber Laminectomy Using Epidural and General Anesthesia

The study will be carried out at anesthesia and surgical intensive care department -Zagazig University Hospitals. Patients of both sexes, assigned to a single or double level lumbar laminectomy or discectomy, will be included in the study. all patients will be preoperatively evaluated according to standard local protocol. patients, who will not be excluded, will be assigned to one of two groups: Group I (control group) patients who will undergo standard general anesthetic technique and Group II (combined general/ epidural anesthesia group (CGEA)) patients will undergo single shot epidural analgesia [by bupivacaine (15 ml with 0.25% concentration)] followed by induction of standard general anesthesia (GA) using tolerable endotracheal tube (TET)

Both groups will be compared as regard:

• Patient recovery in the form of time to extubation, , time to achieving modified aldrete score ≥ 9 , duration of post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) stay and incidence of PACU bypass.
• Patients' satisfaction, time to Post anesthesia discharge scoring system (PADSS) for determining home readiness ≥ 9 and incidence of hospital re-admission
• Intra operative hemodynamic stability, blood loss, operative time and surgeon's satisfaction.
• Postoperative pain scores and analgesic requirements.

Sample size was calculated using Epi Info 6, based on expected time to modified Aldrete score ≥ 9 in group I 13.1± 3.7 in group GA and in group II 7.9 ± 3.2 , confidence interval 95% and power of test 80%, to be 32. Eight patients will be added to compensate for dropout, so the total number of patients will be 40 patients.

All data will be collected, tabulated and statistically analyzed using SPSS 20.0 for windows (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and MedCalc 13 for windows (MedCalc Software bvba, Ostend, Belgium). According to the type of data qualitative data will be represented as number and percentage, parametric quantitative data will be represented by mean ± standard deviation (SD), non-parametric data will be presented as median and range and the following tests were used to test differences for significance and association of qualitative variable by Chi square test (X2). Differences between quantitative multiple by student t-test or Mann Whitney test as appropriate. P value was set at <0.05 for significant results.

Inclusion criteria

• American society of anesthesiologists (ASA) grade I-II
• body mass index (BMI) < 30 kg/m2
• assignment to a single or double level lumbar laminectomy or discectomy

Exclusion criteria

• Patient's refusal of the procedure
• local infection at site of catheter insertion
• recurrent disc surgery, emergency surgery
• coagulopathies
• hemoglobin <8 g/dl
• history of stroke or psychiatric disease
• baseline neurological deficit
• active upper respiratory tract infections
• history of either laryngeal / tracheal surgery or pathology
• uncontrolled hypertension or diabetes mellitus (DM), cardiac, pulmonary, hepatic or renal dysfunction
• any contraindication for study technique or medications
• being on regular steroids, opioid analgesics or alpha 2 agonists.