Epidural pain relief versus systemic opioid-based pain relief for abdominal aortic surgery

Epidural analgesia offers greater pain relief compared to systemic opioid-based medications, but its effect on morbidity and mortality is unclear. This review was originally published in 2006 and was updated in 2011.

To assess the benefits and harms of postoperative epidural analgesia in comparison with postoperative systemic opioid-based pain relief for adult patients who underwent elective abdominal aortic surgery.

We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2010, Issue 11) via Ovid; Ovid MEDLINE (from inception to week 1 November 2010); and EMBASE (from inception to week 1, November 2010). The original search was performed in 2004. We assessed non-English language reports and contacted researchers in the field. We did not seek unpublished data.

We included all randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials comparing postoperative epidural analgesia and postoperative systemic opioid-based analgesia for adult patients who underwent elective open abdominal aortic surgery.

Two authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. We contacted study authors for additional information and data.

We included 15 trials that involved 1297 patients (633 patients received epidural analgesia and 664 received systemic opioid analgesia) in this review. This included one trial we found in our updated search and one trial from our original review that had been awaiting translation. The epidural analgesia group showed significantly lower visual analogue scale scores for pain on movement (up to postoperative day three) regardless of the site of the epidural catheter and epidural formulation. The postoperative duration of tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation was significantly shorter, by about 48%, in the epidural analgesia group. The overall event rates of myocardial infarction, acute respiratory failure (defined as an extended need for mechanical ventilation), gastrointestinal complications, and renal complications were significantly lower in the epidural analgesia group.

Epidural analgesia provides better pain relief (especially during movement) in the period up to three postoperative days. It reduces the duration of postoperative tracheal intubation by roughly half. The occurrence of prolonged postoperative mechanical ventilation, myocardial infarction, gastric complications and renal complications was reduced by epidural analgesia. However, current evidence does not confirm the beneficial effect of epidural analgesia on postoperative mortality and other types of complications.