Regional anesthesia for thoracic surgery

Abstract

Regional anesthesia has an important role in the anesthetic management of thoracic surgeries. Regional
anesthesia provides better pain control than systemic opioid analgesia, controls stress response, and
prevents respiratory complications. These factors should improve patient outcomes. The first choice
of regional anesthesia for thoracic surgery is epidural analgesia or thoracic paravertebral block (TPVB).
In general, analgesic efficiency of epidural analgesia and TPVB is equivalent. However, TPVB has
some advantage over epidural analgesia including fewer complications. When these two blocks are
contraindicated, application of intercostal nerve block or inter-pleural block can be considered