Analgesic effect of erector spinae plane block in adults undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the gold standard surgical procedure for treating gallstone disease. Despite it being minimally invasive, various medications and methods are used to alleviate postoperative pain, and some patients still experience moderate-to-severe pain. This is a crucial problem that must be solved to avoid chronic pain. As part of postoperative multimodal analgesia, regional block is being increasingly applied in surgery under ultrasound guidance. We aimed to evaluate the analgesic effect of erector spinae plane block in adult patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. METHODS: PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Web of Science were searched for randomized controlled trials investigating the efficacy of erector spinae plane block on postoperative pain after laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The primary outcome was the postoperative pain score. The secondary outcomes were the cumulative intraoperative and postoperative opioid consumption at 24 h, incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting, and shoulder pain after surgery. The results were pooled using the fixed- or random-effects model with Review Manager 5.3. RESULTS: Fifteen randomized controlled trials involving 947 patients were included in the analysis. Postoperative pain score in the erector spinae plane block group was lower than that in the control group at postoperative 12 h (MD − 0.81, 95% CI − 1.1 to − 0.51, p < 0.00001) and 24 h (MD − 0.41, 95% CI − 0.62 to − 0.19, p = 0.0002). Cumulative opioid consumption was lower in the erector spinae plane block group than in the control group at postoperative 24 h (MD − 7.88, 95% CI − 10.17 to − 5.58, p < 0.00001). The erector spinae plane block group also experienced a lower incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting than the control group. Opioid consumption and the incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting were similar between the erector spinae plane block group and other block groups, including the oblique subcostal transversus abdominis plane block and quadratus lumborum block groups. CONCLUSIONS: Ultrasound-guided erector spinae plane block provides effective postoperative analgesia in adults undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12871-023-01969-6.