Bilateral External Oblique Intercostal Plane Block Versus Patient Controlled Analgesia (PCA) in Post Operative Pain Management in Hepatectomy Surgery.

The majority of cases undergoing hepatectomy suffer from inadequate postoperative analgesia. Therefore, multimodal analgesic techniques are required to relieve pain and discomfort such as intravenous, and epidural analgesia, and peripheral nerve blocks. Although epidural catheters are efficient to provide perioperative analgesia, in this type of surgery patients may be more susceptible to catheter related complications due to the alteration in coagulation parameters. That is why safer alternatives are sought for those patients. The use of patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) for postoperative pain management improves patients' quality of recovery. However, there are many concerns regarding the type of opioids used in PCA such as overdosing, underdosing, and the effect of the hepatectomy on the drug metabolism in those patients. External oblique intercostal plane block (EOI block) is a relatively novel block used in upper abdominal incisions especially subcostal laparotomy to provide intraoperative and postoperative analgesia.

This study aims to compare the efficacy of Bilateral External Oblique Intercostal Plain Block versus PCA in pain management and reduction of opioid use in hepatectomy surgery done by subcostal incision.