Prospective, randomized comparative study of ultrasound-guided blocking of the lateral cutaneous branches of the intercostal nerves versus conventional analgesia in non-reconstructive breast surgery

Abstract Objective The objective of this study is to determine whether the accomplishment of an interfascial blockade, the blocking of the cutaneous branches of the intercostals nerves in the axillary line (BRILMA) associated with a multimodal analgesic regimen improves post-operative analgesia and allows saving opioids after non-reconstructive surgery of breast. Material and methods A prospective, randomized and simple blind study was conducted on patients that underwent non-reconstructive breast surgery. The patients were randomly assigned to the blocking group, or to the standard post-operative analgesia group (paracetamol and dexketoprofen). The main variables analysed were the pain intensity assessed by the verbal numerical scale and the analgesic rescue needs with tramadol. Results Statistically significant differences were observed in the consumption of tramadol during the study period (10.5 mg in the BRILMA group, compared to 34.3 in the control group, p  = .0001). There were also differences in the pain assessment, with lower values found in the BRILMA group. Conclusions In non-reconstructive breast surgery, performing a BRILMA block allows obtaining lower pain scores, which implies less need for rescue analgesics and a significant saving of tramadol in the study period.