Analgesia del bloqueo ecoguiado del plano transverso del abdomen como coadyuvante en anestesia general para apendicectomía laparoscópica. Hospital “José Carrasco Arteaga”. Cuenca - Ecuador, 2020– 2021

Abstract

Background: the transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block is a multimodal analgesia technique, with proven efficacy in abdominal surgery; the ultrasound-guided technique in real time allows to reduce complications.

General objective: to determine the analgesic degree of ultrasound-guided TAP in laparoscopic appendectomy.

Methods: observational, descriptive, cross-sectional. 118 patients who underwent laparoscopic appendectomy and TAP block participated. A survey was applied in which postoperative pain was assessed at 5 and 120 minutes using the Visual Analog Scale for pain (VAS) and the need for rescue analgesia. Descriptive statistics and personalized tables were extracted to record the information. Results: according to the VAS at 5 min at rest, 50% of patients were categorized with a grade 0, followed by 36.4% in level 2; at 2 hours, 69%, 18.6%, and 15.3% are classified as grade 0, 4, and 2, respectively. It was reduced that 13.6% and the participants required rescue analgesia upon postoperative awakening and 33.9% in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU). In PACU, opioids were the drugs most used in rescue analgesia, since 3 out of 10 patients were managed with these drugs. The prevalence of complications of the transversus abdominis block was only 0.8%, detailing that there was intoxication by local anesthetic.

Conclusions: The TAP block contributed to the fact that patients undergoing laparoscopic appendectomy presented postoperative pain intensity values between mild and moderate according to VAS, in addition, a low prevalence of rescue analgesia with minimal complications was evidenced.