Transversus Abdominis Plane Blocks in Patients Scheduled for an Abdominoplasty. A Prospective, Randomized, Double Blind, Comparison Between the Posterior Approach and Placebo.

TAP blocks have the potential to become an important part of multi-modal analgesia after abdominal surgery (1,2). Originally Dr J McDonnell described a blind double pop technique, trough the triangle of Petit, with up to 48 hours of analgesia (3,4). Dr P Hebbard described an ultrasound based technique with a subcostal (for supra-umbilical analgesia) and an axillary mid-line injection (for sub-umbilical analgesia) in the TAP, with reported analgesia for up to 8 hours (5,6). Recently Dr J McDonnell presented data showing para vertebral spread (up to L5) of the (high dose, low concentration) local anaesthetic explaining the prolonged analgesic effect (7,8). In 2007 Dr Blanco described an ultrasound guided technique for the posterior infiltration as performed by McDonnell (9). Our limited observational comparison between both block techniques confirms this difference. We decided to compare both techniques (the ultrasound guided single shot subcostal injection, the aTAP-group (Hebbard is from Australia) and the ultrasound guided posterior injection, the iTAP-group (McDonnell is from Ireland). We will use the same volume and concentration of local anesthetic and we will asses their analgesic efficacy and improvement in quality of recovery.