Continuous regional anesthesia or a single shot technique for acute postoperative pain treatment?

Abstract

Acute postoperative pain is a great concern to the patients and the surgical team. Pain can contribute to increased morbidity and mortality, health care costs, chronic pain, and patients’ life quality. Many adverse effects are related to inadequately treated postoperative pain as cardio-respiratory complications, deep venous thrombosis, water and salt retention, hyperglycemia, proinflammatory and procoagulation states, and finally chronic pain. Aggressive treatment includes patients’ evaluation, multimodal regimen, and pain killers in the discharged period. Regional analgesia and especially peripheral nerve block are gaining popularity in pain treatment. This editorial view is focused on the comparison of continuous vs. single shot technique.