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Early post-operative mobilization is important both to reduce immobility-related complications and to get the best functional result following surgery on knee. We hypothesized that saphenous nerve block would reduce pain in this patient category compared with placebo injection. In this study, two reviewers independently searched the databases of PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library (last performed on 12 October, 2014) to retrieve eligible randomized controlled clinical trials. The primary outcomes were visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores within 24 hours after operation when at rest and at an active flexion of knee. Mean difference (MD) or odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) was calculated for each end point. Subgroup analysis was calculated to evaluate potential sources of heterogeneity. Nine randomized controlled trials were retrieved and analyzed. We found that VAS pain scores at rest within postoperative 24 hours were significantly decreased in saphenous nerve block group than that in placebo group (MD = -0.79; 95% CI -1.35 to -0.22; P = 0.007), as well as VAS pain scores at an active flexion of knee within postoperative 24 hours (MD = -0.92; 95% CI -1.61 to -0.22; P = 0.010). In addition, compared to placebo injection group, saphenous nerve block resulted in significantly less morphine consumption during the first postoperative 24 hours (MD = -6.56; 95% CI -11.26 to -1.86; P = 0.006). To conclude, this meta-analysis suggests that saphenous nerve block has an advantage in pain relief both at an active flexion of knee and at rest after knee surgery. Further studies are still wanted to validate these conclusions.

Background: The increasing use of the transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block, as a form of pain relief after laparoscopic surgery, warrants evaluation of its effectiveness, when compared with other analgesic techniques., Methods: We searched online databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google scholar and The Cochrane Database of Systematic Review. Mean differences (MD) were formulated for continuous data; odds ratios (OR) were calculated for dichotomous data. Results were produced with a random effects model with 95% confidence intervals (CI)., Results: 14 trials with a total of 905 patients were included for the analysis, TAP block resulted in significantly less postoperative analgesic consumption at 24 h (MD = -25.46, 95% CI [-32.22, -18.69], P < 0.00001), and less number of patients requiring analgesic postoperatively (OR = 0.16, 95% CI 0.03-0.87, P = 0.03). Meanwhile, pain sores were significantly different at 2 h (MD = -1.55, 95% CI [-2.50, -0.59], P < 0.00001), a borderline difference between the groups seen at 6 hours ( MD = -1.13, 95% CI [-1.69, -0.56], P = 0.05), and there was not affect pain at 24 h (MD = -0.33, 95% CI [-0.08, 0.15], P = 0.14) with TAP block groups compared with the groups without TAP block. There was a significant difference in postoperative nausea and vomiting (random effects model: OR = 2.04, 95% CI [1.19-3.48], P = 0.34)., Conclusion: TAP block would result in less analgesic consumption, less requirement of analgesic, and less pain at 2 h and slightly at 6 h but at 24 h after laparoscopic surgery in comparison with usual care alone or placebo block. In addition TAP block can increase the incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting.

The aim of this study is to compare the operative parameters and outcomes of conventional CO2-pneumoperitoneum (PP) versus gasless abdominal wall-lifting (AWL) for laparoscopic surgery. The literature databases of PubMed, Google Scholar and Cochrane Library were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that had compared the CO2-PP approach with that of gasless AWL for laparoscopic surgery and which had been published between 1995 and 2012. Data for the operative parameters (i.e. surgery duration, intraoperative heart rate (HR), perioperative complications, and postoperative duration of hospital stay and time to activity) and outcomes (postoperative shoulder pain, nausea/vomiting (PONV), partial pressure of CO2 in the blood (PaCO2), blood pH, and serum levels of the inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-6) were extracted from the identified RCTs. RevMan software, version 5.2, was used for data synthesis and statistical analysis. Nineteen RCTs were selected for the meta-analysis, involving a total of 791 patients who had undergone laparoscopic operations with CO2-PP (n = 399) or gasless AWL (n = 392). Sub-group analysis indicated that the patients who underwent gasless AWL had significantly shorter postoperative time to activity (weighted mean difference (WMD) = -0.23 d, 95% confidence interval (CI): -0.37 to -0.09; P = 0.001), lower incidence of PONV (odds ratio (OR) = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.10 to 0.57; P = 0.001) and lower postoperative PaCO2 level (WMD = -3.09 mmHg, 95% CI: -4.66 to -1.53; P = 0.0001), compared to the patients who underwent CO2-PP. However, the CO2-PP method was associated with a significantly shorter surgery duration than the gasless AWL method (WMD = 8.61, 95% CI: 3.19 to 14.03; P = 0.002). There were no significant advantages detected for either approach with respect to the intraoperative HR, the perioperative complication rate, or the postoperative parameters of duration of hospital stay, shoulder pain, blood pH, or serum IL-6 level. We concluded form present study that the gasless AWL method has the features of shorter time, lower postoperative PaCO2, and lower PONV incidence while the CO2-PP method for laparoscopy requires shorter surgical time.