Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Sep 2021
Randomized Controlled TrialIs preoperative genicular radiofrequency ablation effective for reducing pain following total knee arthroplasty? A pilot randomized clinical trial.
Although total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is an effective treatment for severe knee osteoarthritis (OA), a subset of patients experience significant postoperative pain and dissatisfaction. Several clinical trials support the analgesic benefits of genicular nerve radiofrequency ablation (GN-RFA) for non-operative knee OA, but only one prior trial has examined the effects of this intervention given preoperatively on postoperative outcomes following TKA, showing no analgesic benefit of cooled GN-RFA. The current study evaluated whether conventional thermal GN-RFA performed preoperatively resulted in significant improvements in pain and function following TKA. ⋯ Conventional GN-RFA of the superior lateral, superior medial, and inferior medial genicular nerves when performed prior to TKA did not provide clinically significant pain relief or improvement in functional status at 2 or 6 weeks postoperatively.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Sep 2021
Randomized Controlled TrialSerratus anterior plane versus paravertebral nerve blocks for postoperative analgesia after non-mastectomy breast surgery: a randomized controlled non-inferiority trial.
Paravertebral and serratus plane blocks are both used to treat pain following breast surgery. However, it remains unknown if the newer serratus block provides comparable analgesia to the decades-old paravertebral technique. ⋯ Serratus blocks provided inferior analgesia compared with paravertebral blocks. Without a dramatic improvement in safety profile for serratus blocks, it appears that paravertebral blocks are superior to serratus blocks for postoperative analgesia after non-mastectomy breast surgery.