Analgesic effectiveness of surgically administered transversus abdominis plane block versus conventional transversus abdominis plane block in elective caesarean sections – an open labelled randomised control trial.

Caesarean section delivery is becoming morefrequent and at present is one of the most common major operative proceduresperformed worldwide. It is important that effectivepostoperative analgesia is provided to facilitate early ambulation, infant care(which also includes breast feeding, mother infant bonding) and prevention ofpostoperative morbidity. Therefore, the analgesic regimen needs to meet thegoals of providing safe and effective analgesia with minimal side effects forthe mother and the neonate. TAP block as a part of multimodal analgesic regimenwould result in decreased opioid and NSAID consumption and improved analgesia.TAP block is conventionally performed by the anaesthesiologist, using apercutaneous approach under ultrasound-guidance. The surgically administeredTAP block is a variant of TAP block administration, the efficacy of which incomparison to the conventional TAP block as a part of multimodal analgesicregimen following caesarean section is not very widely studied till date. Ourstudy is designed to assess if the newly described surgical TAP block is aseffective as the conventional TAP block (by comparing the requirement of rescueanalgesia in both the groups) for post-operative analgesia following caesareansection in the Indian set-up in which surgical TAP block prove to be an easierprocedure as there no the need for skilled operators or specialized equipment.