Adult patients undergoing elective unilateral thoracotomy for lung cancer resection are randomly allocated to receive US-guided ESP block (n=31) or thoracic epidural analgesia (n=31). Both procedures are performed prior to surgery. Each patient was assessed by a blinded investigator on postoperative day (POD) 1,2 and 3. The primary outcome is pain severity evaluated by a numeric rating scale (NRS) at POD1.
This prospective, randomized, assessor-blinded study is designed to evaluate the postoperative analgesic efficacy of the ultrasound-guided continuous erector spinae plane (ESP) block in patients undergoing thoracotomy. We hypothesize that US-guided ESP block is not inferior to thoracic epidural analgesia in terms of postoperative pain control in these patients.