A randomised controlled study to assess the efficacy of ultrasound guided bilateral erector spinae block for post-operative analgesia in laparoscopic abdominal surgeries: 

During abdominal surgery pain is multifactorial.

Insufficient post-operative pain management hampers the achievement of good recovery after surgery and the risk of postoperative complications like delayed mobilization, ileus, nausea, chronic pain, with which patient’s satisfaction can seriously be affected with prolonged hospital stay that increases the financial burden both at the individual and societal level.

Thus, adequate post-operative pain management in patients undergoing abdominal surgery is though challenging but rewarding task.

Some of the efficacious analgesic options are intravenous drugs mainly the opioids, epidural block, fascial plane blocks like Transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block and Erector spine plane (ESP) block

Opioids are successful in the treatment of visceral pain but not so effective for somatic pain and are related to side effects such as constipation, nausea and vomiting, pruritus, and life threatening respiratory depression. 

Frequent concerns with epidural block are hypo-coagulability and post-operative hypotension.

One of the recent techniques include facial plane blocks like Erector spine plane (ESP) and Transversus Abdominis Plane (TAP) block.

With ESP block, both visceral as well as somatic analgesia are provided, acute as well as chronic pain are relieved by it and can be utilised for analgesia at cervical, thoracic & m abdominal levels with minimal side effects. ESPB has shown significant analgesic effect with lesser pain scores and lower opioid consumption during various abdominal surgeries in the post-operative period. 

In our study we will compare the efficacy of Ultrasound guided bilateral erector spine block in post-operative analgesia in abdominal surgeries with another group in which block won’t be given.