Pain Injection Versus Epidural Anesthesia for Hip Surgery in Pediatric Patients With Cerebral Palsy

Over the past decade, there has been an ongoing shift away from the use of opioids in the postoperative setting due to both their negative side effects and their high potential for dependence and abuse. Various new techniques for multimodal pain management are increasingly being utilized in adult orthopaedics, including injection of local anesthetics and analgesic agents. These techniques aim to block pain directly at the site of injection in order to reduce postoperative pain while minimizing systemic effects and preserving motor function, allowing for early mobilization. Numerous randomized controlled trials in both the arthroplasty and adult trauma populations have demonstrated reduced pain and narcotic consumption with local analgesia injection, but there is scant evidence on the efficacy of similar injections in pediatric surgical patients. While robust evidence demonstrating both safety and efficacy of these injections has led to routine use in the adult orthopaedic population, use in pediatric patients still remains limited, likely due to a lack of level I therapeutic evidence. Local anesthetic injections offer several theoretical advantages over current pain management modalities. When compared with other methods of anesthesia, including epidural anesthesia or some peripheral nerve blocks, local anesthetic injections preserve motor function, allowing for early mobilization and rehabilitation. Additionally, they do not require specialized equipment or anesthesia personnel and can be administered in the operating room without significantly affecting the duration of the procedure. While a mainstay in traditional pain management protocols, epidural anesthesia in the pediatric CP population poses specific risks including damage to preexisting intrathecal baclofen pumps and iatrogenic infection. Moreover, epidural insertion can be a technically demanding procedure in these patients given high rates of concomitant neuromuscular scoliosis. Prior retrospective studies comparing peripheral nerve and lumbar plexus blocks compared to epidural anesthesia have shown mixed results in decreasing pain scores and opioid use in this patient population. As described in Preliminary Data section below, the investigators' pilot randomized control trial demonstrated significantly decreased pain scores and narcotic use postoperatively in pediatric patients with CP who received multimodal analgesia injection compared to placebo while undergoing hip surgery. The present study aims to substantively contribute to current literature by providing level I evidence comparing the safety and efficacy of surgical site injections with epidural anesthesia in a patient population for whom pain management remains challenging.