Comparison of Postoperative Analgesic Efficacy of Ultrasound-Guided Bilateral Rectus Sheath Block With That of Local Anaesthetic Infiltration in Patients Undergoing Emergency Midline Laparotomy Surgeries: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Purpose Rectus sheath block (RSB) is increasingly utilised as a part of multimodal analgesia in laparotomy surgeries. We proposed this study to compare the analgesic efficacy of ultrasound-guided bilateral RSB with local anaesthetic (LA) infiltration. The primary outcome was the visual analogue scale (VAS) at rest and cough. The secondary outcomes were the postoperative morphine consumption, time to first rescue analgesia, incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) and patient satisfaction score. Methods In our prospective, single-centre, randomised clinical trial, we enrolled a total of 100 patients undergoing emergency midline laparotomy surgeries. They were randomly allocated into two groups and were administered either LA infiltration (group L, n=50) or ultrasound-guided bilateral RSB (group R, n=50) with 15-20 ml of 0.25% bupivacaine end operatively. The categorical and ordinal variables were analysed using Chi-square/ Fisher’s exact test. The continuous and discrete variables were analysed using Mann-Whitney/independent Student t-test. Results The median VAS scores in the postoperative period were significantly lower with RSB when compared with LA. Statistically significant differences in median VAS scores were noticed at one hour (P<0.001), four hours (P=0.001), eight hours (P<0.001), and 12 hours (P=0.014) at rest, and at one hour (P<0.001), four hours (P<0.001) and eight hours (P<0.001) during cough. The median morphine consumption was less with RSB (P<0.001). The time to first rescue analgesia was prolonged with RSB (P<0.001). The incidence of PONV was significantly lower with RSB (P=0.027). Conclusion Bilateral ultrasound-guided RSB provides extended postoperative analgesia at rest and cough for patients undergoing emergency laparotomy surgeries when compared with LA infiltration. There was a significant reduction in morphine consumption, incidence of PONV, and prolonged time to first rescue analgesia with RSB.