A Randomized Controlled Trial of Continuous Subpleural Bupivacaine After Thoracoscopic Surgery

We sought to evaluate the merit of routine placement of a subpleural tunneled pain catheter delivering local anesthetic as measured by narcotic medication usage and subjective pain score analysis. Eighty-six patients were randomized into the subpleural catheter or intraoperative incision site injection groups in a 1:1 fashion, and underwent thoracoscopic surgery using 2 incisions. All patients had standardized anesthetic delivery and postoperative pain control. Patients' use of pain medication and pain scores was tracked for 7 days postoperatively. There was no significant difference in the 2 groups' usage of narcotics (P = 0.23), acetaminophen (P = 0.23), or nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (P = 0.57) over time from linear mixed model analysis. The subpleural catheter group had significantly higher nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug self-reported usage on postoperative day 4 (P = 0.04), postoperative day 5 (P = 0.05), postoperative day 6 (P = 0.01), and postoperative day 7 (P <0.01). There were no significant differences in average daily pain scores (all P ≥ 0.06). Length of hospital stay and results from 30-day postoperative surveys were not significantly different between the subpleural catheter and the intraoperative incision site injection groups. Our results did not show any objective differences between the subpleural catheter and the intraoperative incision site injection groups to justify routine use of tunneled subpleural catheters. The main limitation of this study is missing self-reported data. The differences noted in daily nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug use in the pain catheter arm may actually suggest slightly worse pain control in those patients, although the clinical significance seems to be minimal.