Background: Regional anesthesia technique has been reported to exert excellent analgesic efficacy for various surgeries. Erector spinae plane block (ESPB) and transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block are good ways to relieve postoperative pain after abdominal surgery. However, the analgesic efficacy between them remains controversial. This meta-analysis evaluated the analgesic effect between these two blocks in abdominal surgery with statistical and clinical interpretation.
Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials.gov register, and Embase databases were systematically searched by two independent investigators from the inception to December 2021.
Results: 10 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comprising 570 patients were included in the final meta-analysis. Meta-analysis revealed that ESPB decreased the opioid consumption and improved the pain scores during the first 24 postoperative hours compared with TAP groups statistically, while the magnitude of this difference did not reach the clinically significant threshold (10 mg of intravenous morphine consumption and 1.3 cm on the VAS scale). In addition, ESPB prolonged blockade duration and decreased the occurrence of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV). However, it did not improve the patients' satisfaction.
Conclusions: Although ESPB does not provide better clinical analgesia than the TAP block, it could be a comparable nerve block technique for abdominal wall analgesia.
Keywords: Erector spinae plane block; meta-analysis; postoperative pain management; regional anesthesia technique; transversus abdominis plane block.