Low Dose Caudal vs Dorsal Penile Nerve Block for Postoperative Analgesia after Circumcision

Abstract

Abstract Background Circumcision is a painful surgery that is mostly performed under general anesthesia in order to eliminate fear and anxiety. Regional techniques are more effective than systemic opioids, non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and acetaminophen for postoperative analgesia in circumcision, The most preferred techniques are dorsal penile nerve block and caudal block. Objective To investigate the effectiveness of post operative analgesia and complications among dorsal penile nerve block, caudal block and the combination of both. Patients and Methods Our study was carried out to compare the effectiveness, duration of postoperative analgesia, and the complications among dorsal penile nerve block (DPNB), caudal nerve block (CNB) and the combination of both. This study was carried out on 81 male patients, aged from 3-12 years old & undergoing circumcision. The patients were divided into 3 groups, each is composed of 27 patients; group 1 including DPNB patients, group 2 including CNB patients and group 3 for combined block. This study compared between the three groups regarding the intraoperative vital data (HR,BP), post-operative VAS scores and the complications (nausea, vomiting, urinary retention, itching, constipation & CNS depression). Results The demographic data (age, weight & height) does not differ between the three groups of the study. There is difference in the VAS score post operatively, being significantly less in the CNB group. There was no significant difference in the percentage of complications between the groups, except for urinary retention being slightly increased in the CNB group. Conclusion Our results showed that, CNB is superior to DPNB in intraoperative and postoperative analgesia after circumcision as regarding pain control. However CNB is associated with more complications compared to the DPNB. Also, the results showed that there‟s no need to combine both blocks as it gave the same results as with the CNB alone.