Pro: Regional Anesthesia for Cardiac Surgery With Sternotomy

Abstract

With the growing prevalence of cardiovascular disease worldwide, over 2 million patients undergo median sternotomy for cardiac surgery annually.1 The incidence of severe acute postoperative pain after sternotomy is as high as 49%, and appropriate management of this pain has important implications for short- and long-term recovery.2 Inadequate post-surgical pain control following sternotomy in cardiac surgery has profound negative consequences on pulmonary function, hemodynamics, myocardial oxygen demand, postoperative delirium, and ICU and hospital length of stay.3 Severe pain has also been shown to harm long-term outcomes such as quality of life4,5 and is associated with the development of persistent post-sternotomy pain with an incidence as high as 35% at 1-year follow-up.1,6