Jain A, Kaushal A, Kumar H, Karna ST, Ahmad Z, Trivedi S. Analgesic efficacy of continuous ultrasound-guided unilateral erector spinae block and thoracic epidural analgesia in patients undergoing antero-lateral thoracotomy. World J Methodol 2025; 15(4): 105386 [DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v15.i4.105386]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Saurabh Trivedi, Assistant Professor, Department of Trauma and Emergency Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Saket Nagar, Bhopal 462024, Madhya Pradesh, India. drst23@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Anesthesiology
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Anuj Jain, Ashutosh Kaushal, Harish Kumar, Sunaina T Karna, Zainab Ahmad, Department of Anaesthesiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal 462024, Madhya Pradesh, India
Saurabh Trivedi, Department of Trauma and Emergency Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal 462024, Madhya Pradesh, India
Co-first authors: Anuj Jain and Saurabh Trivedi.
Author contributions: Jain A and Trivedi S designed the research study, and they contributed equally to this article as co-first authors; Jain A, Kaushal A, Kumar H, Karna ST, Ahmad Z, and Trivedi S performed the research, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript; and all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhopal, India (approval No. IHEC-LOP/2021/IM0380).
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at drst23@gmail.com.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Saurabh Trivedi, Assistant Professor, Department of Trauma and Emergency Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Saket Nagar, Bhopal 462024, Madhya Pradesh, India. drst23@gmail.com
Received: January 22, 2025 Revised: April 18, 2025 Accepted: June 13, 2025 Published online: December 20, 2025 Processing time: 195 Days and 4.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This prospective study compared the analgesic efficacy of unilateral continuous erector spinae block (ESB) vs thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA) in patients undergoing thoracotomy, evaluating pain scores and perioperative hemodynamics. While rescue opioid requirements within 24 hours post-extubation were comparable between the two groups, resting numerical rating scale scores at 0 hour, 6 hours, and 72 hours were significantly higher in the ESB cohort. Hemodynamically, the ESB group maintained higher mean arterial pressures, whereas TEA was associated with greater hypotensive episodes, necessitating significantly more vasopressor support to sustain mean arterial pressures ≥ 65 mmHg at 0 hours and 6 hours. Although TEA demonstrates superior analgesia, its use is limited by increased hemodynamic instability, suggesting ESB as a viable alternative when cardiovascular compromise is a concern.
