"The Efficacy of Exparel Versus a Multidrug Cocktail in Soft Tissue Tumors"

In recent years, there has been a substantial push to create a post-surgical protocol consisting of multimodal analgesia across multiple surgical subspecialties to decrease narcotic consumption and cost1. The negative side effects of narcotics and their addiction potential are well understood.

One of the modes of analgesia currently in use to mitigate surgical pain is some form of local anesthetic. Increasing the duration of analgesia has been sought after since its inception. Subsequently, longer acting anesthetics like bupivacaine have been implemented as well as supplementing their use with other drugs, such as epinephrine, to increase their effect duration and overall efficacy2. This has led to the development of Liposomal Bupivicaine or Exparel (TM, Parsippany NJ etc.) Exparel works by infusing liposomes in the administration of the long acting local analgesic which entrap the biologically active drug and slowly release it over a period of 72-96 hours 3-4. Thus, post-operative pain can be managed via direct injection of the drug at the surgical site with upwards to four days of pain relief.

Exparel has been studied extensively in the surgical literature; although within orthopedics, it has been primarily in regard to arthroplasty5. There has yet to be a study to illicit the best form of post-operative pain control in the world of orthopedic oncology, specifically in soft tissue tumors.

The objective of this proposed project is to determine which local anesthetic is more efficacious for use in soft tissue tumors: Exparel (liposomal bupivacaine) or a cocktail of Ropivicaine, Epinepherine, Ketolorac and Clonidine. This study will examine patients' post-operative pain levels as well as their narcotic consumption after removal of a soft tissue tumor while hospitalized and then twice daily through postoperative day 14.