Lidocaine Infusion for Pain After Herniotomy

This study seeks to investigate lidocaine infusion to reduce occurrence of chronic postoperative pain at 3-month after inguinal herniotomy

Inguinal hernia repair is associated with a 5%-30% incidence of chronic pain; however, the pathogenesis remains unknown, and few studies have assessed chronic pain as the primary aim of the study. Lidocaine infusion could be a possible approach to reducing the prevalence of chronic pain after herniotomy. Recently, a meta-analysis concluded a modest but statistically significant reduction of pain severity in the first four postoperative hours measured by the visual analogue scale (mean difference, -0.84; 95% CI, -1.10 to -0.59). However, a more recent meta-analysis found that only limited clinical data and biological plausibility support lidocaine infusions for the prevention of postoperative persistent pain (odds ratio, 0.29; 95% CI, 0.18 to 0.48). This study was designed to investigate whether lidocaine infusion after inguinal herniotomy would lower the incidence of chronic postoperative pain.