Although considered a minimally invasive procedure, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) frequently results in moderate to severe immediate postoperative pain. In addition to predominant visceral pain, nearly half of all patients suffer from shoulder pain in the early postoperative period. The most likely reason is sub-diaphragmatic irritation, which is transmitted by the phrenic nerve, causing referred pain in the C4 dermatome. Due to multiple sources of pain, multimodal analgesia approaches have been used in the perioperative period following LC.
Although considered a minimally invasive procedure, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) frequently results in moderate to severe immediate postoperative pain.