Post-operative pain after a kidney transplant can be moderate to severe, but analgesic options are limited. Clearance of the active metabolite of morphin is low in patients with chronic kidney disease, which imposes a strict monitoring of morphin administration. Therefore pain control is difficult and non-optimal.
Reducing both pain and opioid consumption during the per and post operative periods constitutes a major stake, and involves the use of locoregional anesthesia techniques.
The recent literature recommends the realization of a transversus abdominal plane block, despite contradictory results concerning the expected effect.
Even though peridural analgesia remains the gold standard in many types of surgeries, it is not recommended in case of renal transplant due to multiple secondary effects.
The quadratus lumborum bloc echoguid is a recent technique of locoregional analgesia, used in lower abdominal surgeries (appendicectomy, césarian, digestive resection, …) "because of a prolonged duration of action and a sensitive anesthesia spreading" (which provides a much wider field of analgesia?). This technique is not described for the kidney transplant surgery.
This type of bloc will be realized after the induction of general anesthesia. The patient will be positioned in dorsal decubitus with a lumbar block or in left lateral decubitus to expose the iliac fossa and the right flan. After echographia landmark, a solution of local anesthesic will be place in contact of the quadratus lumborum muscle, into the median beam, to obtain a crescent moon image, sign of the good spreading of the local anesthesic.
