Comparison of Analgesic Efficacy of Ultrasound Guided Retrolaminar Block vs Caudal Block for Paediatric Patients Undergoing Open Inguinal Surgeries: A Non-Inferiority Randomised Controlled Trial

Regional anaesthesia for inguinal surgeries in children has attracted increasing interest and different technique like like subarachnoid,caudal,epidural block,wound infiltration,ilioinguinal and paravertebral block have been used with varying success.

In Paediatric surgery caudal block is a low cost,simple and effective procedure for post operative analgesia.

Retrolaminar Block is one of the newer and simpler alternative technique to the traditional caudal block.Drug is deposited into the retrolaminar spacebetween the lamina of T12 and paraspinal muscle.

Caudal block is most common regional anaesthesia technique used for inguinal surgeries in paediatric patients. Caudal block is not free of complications and can include side effects and complications like hypotension,motor blockage,urinary retension,subdural,intravascular or intraosseus injections of the drug,injury to nerve roots and spinal cord infections etc.Retrolaminar block in other hand is less invasive and the target is away from neuroaxis,rendering it potentially safe.

Through this study,we are trying to explorean alternative regional anaesthesia technique that is less invasive with non-inferior analgesic benefit compared to Caudal block.

No RCT has been conducted till date comparing Retrolaminar Block to Caudal block in paediatric patients.

We expect that Retrolaminar Block will provide analgesia non inferior to Caudal block in Paediatric patients undergoing inguinal surgeries.This will help us to inculcate this block as routine practice in our setup in this subset of patients.