Transversus Abdominis Plane Block Versus Local Anesthetic Infiltration for Pain Control in the Abdominal Surgery

Postoperative analgesia is an important part of the anesthetic care. According to the recent studies, multimodal analgesia can provide better analgesia & patient satisfaction with fewer side effect. For example, combining intravenous, intramuscular or oral analgesics with transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block or local anesthetic (LA) infiltration as the multimodal analgesia, can furnish a more effective pain control after the abdominal surgery.

For abdominal surgery, both local infiltration and TAP block target on relieving somatic pain. Local anesthetic wound infiltration is easy to perform with low risk. As the advancement of ultrasound technology, performing the TAP block also becomes easier, safer and more accurate. But whether LA infiltration or TAP block is better for the multimodal analgesia regimen remains unclear.

This study is to compare the postoperative pain score, opioid consumption, side effects, and quality of recovery between these two analgesic methods in patients undergoing abdominal surgery. The investigators hypothesized that TAP block may be more effective than LA infiltration as a part of the multimodal analgesia, and can improve the recovery after the abdominal surgery.