Enhanced recovery after surgery programs for laparoscopic colorectal resection may not need thoracic epidural analgesia

Abstract

Background/Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the necessity of thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA) as enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) programs for laparoscopic colorectal surgery (LC). Patients and Methods: We retrospectively compared between perioperative outcomes of patients who underwent LC with TEA (n=31) and with multimodal analgesia (MMA) (n=31). Furthermore, we also evaluated the patients' satisfaction by a questionnaire survey to the nurses. Results: The only numeric rating scale (NRS) score on post-operative day (POD) 1 of the MMA group was significantly higher than that in the TEA group (p=0.002). In multivariate analysis, the factors that demonstrated significant correlation with hospital stay did not include analgesia. The 74% of the nurses felt equal or higher analgesic effect in the MMA group and interestingly, 84% of them answered that they would choose MMA if they were to undergo LC. Conclusion: TEA may not be necessary for ERAS in LC.