Comparison of the Effects of Epidural Analgesia and Local Infiltrative Analgesia Methods on Pain Control

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is one of the major orthopedic surgeries that cause severe postoperative pain. 60% of the patients undergoing TKA have severe pain and 30% have moderate pain postoperatively. Many methods are used in the effective treatment of pain after TKA. The administration of analgesic drugs to the wound site in the form of local infiltration is included in the pain treatment both as an independent technique and in addition to multimodal analgesia in the treatment of postoperative pain. Epidural analgesia (EA) is known for its place in the treatment of pain after TKA and its suppressive effect on the stress response. Similar to the study, no publication was found in the literature that evaluated the suppression of surgical stress response and the effectiveness of local infiltrative analgesia (LIA) in lower extremity surgery. Therefore, it was aimed in the study to compare the effects of EA and LIA on postoperative pain and stress response in patients who underwent total knee arthroplasty.