Continuous Femoral Nerve Blockade versus Continuous Epidural Analgesia for Postoperative Pain Relief in Knee Surgeries

Background: For patients to receive the best treatment and have a positive functional result in the postoperative phase, effective pain management is crucial. In recent years, attempts have been made to improve continuous regional analgesic procedures and find nonopioid analgesic adjuncts. The focus of anesthesia-based acute pain care remains on epidural analgesia. Generally speaking, the majority of current research keeps showing the benefits of epidural analgesia when local anaesthetics (Las) are combined with opioids. Objective: Compare the benefits of continuous femoral nerve block (CFNB) with those of continuous epidural analgesia (CEA) for postoperative pain management after knee surgeries. Methods: During six months duration there were 28 patients who had total knee arthroplasties performed at Ain Shams University Hospitals. Of these patients, 14 of them had continuous epidural analgesia, 14 had CFNB. Results: CFNB and CEA differed significantly in pain scores throughout the first six, twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight, and seventy-two hours, although there was no significant difference in the frequency of adverse effects.There was statistically significant increase in the number of patients achieved knee joint movement > 90o in CEA group than CFNB group at day 1 (71.4% vs 28.6%) and at day 2 (85.7% vs 50%) and at day 3 (100.0% vs 71.4%) with p-value = 0.023, 0.043 and 0.030 respectively. Conclusion: Our research showed that when it came to managing postoperative pain following total knee replacement, CEA provided better analgesia and pain control than CFNB.