Effect of Erector Spinae (ESP) Block on Opioid Reduction and Enhanced Recovery After Posterior Cervical Spine Surgery

Patients undergoing spine surgery frequently experience significant pain after surgery. Currently, standard management of acute pain after surgery consists mainly of systemic opioid narcotics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Generally, opiates and NSAIDs are not completely effective at managing pain, and they carry significant risk of addiction and overdose, particularly with prolonged or increased dosing. The concept of multimodal or ''balanced'' analgesia is rapidly becoming the 'standard of care' for preventing post-operative pain. It consists of the use of combinations of analgesics of different classes with different sites of action in an attempt to provide superior pain relief with reduced analgesic related side effects. Local anesthetic injection to block specific nerves has been widely recognized as a useful adjunct in a multimodal approach to postoperative pain management.

Erector Spinae Plane (ESP) block is a recently described plane block designed to block the dorsal and ventral rami of the thoracic spinal nerves. It has shown to be an effective modality for postoperative pain management as a part of multimodal analgesia in spinal surgery.