The Efficacy and Safety of Liposomal Bupivacaine in Relieving Postoperative Pain After Video-assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is less invasive compared to traditional thoracotomy. It is reported that the incidence of acute pain following VATS exceeds 80%. Inadequate postoperative analgesia may trigger a series of adverse physiological stress responses, increase the occurrence of postoperative complications, and affect the rehabilitation process.If acute pain is not managed promptly and sufficiently, nearly one-quarter of patients may develop chronic pain, impacting normal life and sleep quality after discharge. Local infiltration anesthesia at the incision site is one of the simplest, safest, and most effective methods for preventing postoperative incision pain. Liposomal bupivacaine(LB) is a novel, long-acting, sustained-release amide-type local anesthetic, providing localized analgesic effects for up to 72 hours. Some researchers have reported the analgesic effects of LB VS traditional local anesthetics infiltration, but the current research results are highly heterogeneous. More prospective studies are needed to evaluate whether LB infiltration is superior to the traditional local anesthetics for the management of postoperative pain. The investigators designed this study to compare the analgesic effect of using LB plus bupivacaine for local infiltration with bupivacaine along for patients after VATS.