USG-guided TAP block in children for lower abdominal surgery A comparative study with caudal block

The present study demonstrates that ultrasound guided Caudal block and ultrasound guided TAP block with 0.25% ropivacaine provides additional benefit to multimodal analgesia in children undergoing lower abdominal surgery. Moreover, The patients who received TAP block required less postoperative rescue analgesia with superior performance on pain scores and better patients and parent satisfaction than caudal block. It was also found, that the USG technique was easier to perform and without any adverse effect especially with direct visualization of the site of injection and drug delivery.Moreover, TAP as well as caudal block was hemodynamically safe with minimal changes in intraoperative and post operative hemodynamic parameters.Duration of analgesia was significantly longer in children who received TAP block as compared to caudal block. Whereas , quality of analgesia was good in all the children following both TAP block as well as caudal block.