Perirectal block for out-patient anorectal surgery: A new technique

Introduction. Perirectal block using four puncture places has been classically described for rectal surgery. Objective. This paper was aimed at showing the quality of anesthesia and postoperative analgesia using a new two-puncture-site technique. Materials and methods. Patients scheduled for ambulatory rectal surgery between January/2003 and December/2007 were included consecutively. The new two-puncture technique was used. Alternative anesthetic management and level of postoperative pain requirements were evaluated (rated visual analogue scale-VAS). Follow-up was done by telephone between 1(st) and 10(th) postoperative day to evaluate complications, pain (yes/no), and satisfaction level (1-5 points score). Results. Four hundred and nine subjects were included; 50.61% were female. Mean age was 43 (95%Cl: 41-44; range: 17-85), 12.7% were aged over 60. According to the American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA), 72.6% were classified as ASA1 and 26.1% ASA2. External and internal hemorrhoidectomy was performed on 31% of patients; 61.6% had two or more procedures. Lidocaine was used on 406 subjects. Ropivacaine was added for 9.2% of them and levobupivacaine for 89.4%. 394 patients were followed-up. Median follow-up was 4 days. A response was obtained from 346 subjects (84.6%); 105 (30.3%) recalled having suffered pain during the post-operative period, being most frequent in the lidocaine+ropivacaine group (17/39, 43.5%) than in the lidocaine+bupivacaine group (88/307, 28.6%). Satisfaction was evaluated by 336 subjects (82.1%), 332 of them (98.8%) awarding a score of 5. Two subjects (0.6%) scored this 2 and 1. Subjects did not mention complications. Conclusions. The new pen-rectal two-puncture block technique is easy and also provides analgesia and a high degree of satisfaction.