The Additive Analgesic Effects of Transversus Abdominis Plane Block in Abdominoplasty Under Spinal Anaesthesia: A Randomized Controlled Study

Abdominoplasty is designed to remove fat, skin laxity, and excess skin with the abdominal skin flap. It is a moderately invasive extraperitoneal procedure with or without liposuction. Ambulatory office-based abdominoplasty procedures have recently increased owing to lower cost and global availability of plastic surgeons in addition to better and safer anaesthetic techniques Spinal anaesthesia has many advantages such as pre-emptive analgesia, better control of pain, suppression of the surgical stress response, preservation of perioperative immune function, preservation of oxygenation and pulmonary functional residual capacity and improved visceral vascular flow in addition to reduction in the incidence of venous thrombotic disease and hence pulmonary embolism, as it facilitates early ambulation The addition of adjuvant drugs to local anesthetics and augmenting spinal anesthesia with peripheral nerve blocks would provide time for prolonged surgeries, and it is the ideal technique for procedures below T3-T4. The investigators assume that performing a transversus abdominis plane block (TAP block) just before spinal anesthesia in abdominoplasty would prolong the duration of postoperative analgesia and lessen the number of cases needing sedation or conversion to general anesthesia when compared to spinal anesthesia alone.