Assessment of Three Distinct Approaches to Postoperative Pain in Laparoscopic Inguinal Hernia Repair, a Randomized Prospective Study

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Contemporarily, transabdominal preperitoneal repair (TAPP) procedure in inguinal hernia treatment is counted among the routine minimal invasive general surgery practices. Increased patient's comfort, namely less postoperative pain, is considered to be its greatest advantage. However, pain following surgery can still be an important problem. Port site local anesthetic injection (PSLAI), iliohypogastric-/ilioinguinal nerve block (IINB), and preperitoneal local anesthetic spraying (PLAS) are relatively new techniques with sparse data to address this issue. Therefore, we conducted this prospective study to evaluate these three methods in patients who underwent TAPP for inguinal hernia repair. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A total of 99 patients were enrolled and randomized equally into three groups. Every patient received a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) device. PCA usage, total analgesic demands, and numerical rating scale values were recorded at 2, 6, 12, and 24 hours postoperatively (p.o). <b><i>Results:</i></b> Patients' demographic data (age, gender, BMI) did not reveal any significant difference between groups (<i>P</i> > .05). Procedure duration was found to be significantly longer in IINB group compared with others (<i>p</i> < .05). Number of PCA usages, total analgesic demand, additional analgesic requirement did not differ significantly between groups at 24-hour p.o (<i>P</i> > .05). PLAS group was found to have less average NSR score compared with other groups at 24 hours p.o (<i>p</i> < .05). <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> All three procedures show promising outcomes with PLAS technique appearing to be slightly superior in terms of pain management in the immediate postoperative period. However, to reach a conclusion more randomized controlled trials covering various aspects and techniques of minimal invasive approach to inguinal hernia repair should be published.