Erector Spinae Plane Blockade in Pediatric Scoliosis Surgery Patients

Providing effective analgesia after spinal fusion for idiopathic scoliosis remains a challenge with significant practice variation existing among high volume spine surgery centers. Even in the era of multimodal analgesia, opioids are the primary analgesics used for pain control after pediatric scoliosis surgery, but have multiple known adverse effects. The erector spinae plane block (ESPB) is a newly described fascial plane block performed by injecting local anesthetic between the erector spinae muscle and the transverse process. Additionally, there are case reports describing the ESPB as part of a multi-modal analgesic plan in adult degenerative spine surgery as well as adult spinal deformity surgery, demonstrating effective analgesia and no clinical motor blockade. Although it is known that the inflammatory reaction plays a crucial role in the mechanism of acute pain after major surgery, the effectiveness of the current regional approach on inflammatory response is not well studied.