Efficacy of the Mid-point Transverse Process to Pleura Block Versus Serratus Anterior Plane Block for Postoperative Analgesia After Modified Radical Mastectomy as a Randomized Trial

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women both in the developed and less developed world. In 2012, it represented about 12 percent of all new cancer cases and 25 percent of all cancers in women (Jain et al., 2020).

Surgery is one of the mainstays of treatment, and a procedure called modified radical mastectomy (MRM) is now a standard surgical treatment for early stage breast cancers.These procedures cause significant acute pain and may progress to chronic pain states in 25-60% of cases (Andersen and Kehlet, 2011).

Though various risk factors have been suggested, inappropriate acute postoperative pain management has been associated with the development of chronic post mastectomy pain, a complex post-surgical pain syndrome that may occur following any type of breast surgery (Macrea, 2001). The traditional opioid based analgesia remains the mainstay, however. Different techniques including regional local anaesthetic infiltration, paravertebral and neuroaxial analgesia, anti_neuropathic analgesics and NMDA antagonists have all been used either singly or in combination, (Macrea, 2001). Post operative pain is usually acute nociceptive pain, it occurs as normal response to noxious insult or injury (Dworkin et al., 2007) .

Inadequately controlled pain negatively affects quality of life, functional recovery and increase the risk for post-surgical complications (Apfelbaum, 2003).

After the application of ultrasound in anaesthetic practice,several blocks have been described recently,Serratus anterior plane blocks performed at the axillary fossa within a region bounded by the anterior and posterior axillary lines and th 3rd to 6th ribs (Chin et al., 2021), in which the intercostobrachialis nerve, lateral cutaneous branches of the intercostal nerves (T2-T9),long thoracic nerve,and the thoracodorsal nerve are located in a compartment between the serratus anterior and the latissimus dorsi muscles (Blanco et al., 2013).