Efficacy of liposomal bupivacaine in spine surgery: a systematic review

Spine surgery with posterior approaches may involve extensive manipulation of native structures, resulting in significant postoperative pain. Liposomal bupivacaine (LB) is an injectable analgesic that has demonstrated efficacy in decreasing postoperative pain and opioid requirements in patients across multiple surgical subspecialties.

To consolidate and analyze the findings of retrospective cohort-matched studies and prospective randomized controlled trials investigating the use of LB in spine surgery.

A systematic review.

Retrospective cohort-matched studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the efficacy of injected LB in spinal surgery compared with a control/no treatment group.

MEDLINE, Cochrane controlled trials register, and Google Scholar were searched to identify all studies that examined the effect of LB use on outcomes in spine surgery. Our search identified 10 articles that independently evaluated the effect of LB on reduction of postoperative opioid use, pain scores, hospital length of stay, cost, and incidence of adverse effects. The principles of GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations) were applied to assess the quality of evidence from each study.

Ten studies were analyzed (1,112 total patients). LB was associated with significantly lower millimolar morphine equivalents (MME) of postoperative opioids, especially in opiate-tolerant patients, visual analog scale (VAS) scores, area under the curve (AUC) of cumulative pain scores, numeric pain scale scores, and hospital length of stay (LOS), with comparable or lower odds of adverse effects relative to controls.

Low-quality evidence suggests that liposomal bupivacaine may safely decrease postoperative opioid requirements, pain scores, and length of stay in patients undergoing spine surgery, whereas moderate-quality evidence does not support its use at this time. Therefore, additional standardized well-powered prospective studies are necessary to more clearly assess the efficacy of LB in spine surgery.