The postoperative analgesia of retrolaminar block in patients undergoing surgery with general anesthesia: a systematic review

Postoperative pain has always been a difficult problem in anesthesia management. The neurological block technique has been used for postoperative analgesia management, but compared with the traditional block method, the effect of postoperative analgesia after layer block is still controversial, and a clear literature review is needed. This systematic review's goal was to investigate RLB's impact on postoperative analgesia.The literature search was performed using the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) databases. Patients aged 18 years who underwent retrolaminar block were considered eligible. The article must report the results of the original study related to postoperative analgesia. The characteristics of the study sample and evaluating the RLB for postoperative analgesia were extracted from each included article and concluded.Eleven randomized controlled trials (726 patients) were included. After summarizing the analysis of the results of RLB on changing postoperative analgesia indexes in different surgeries, we concluded that PVB is better used for postoperative analgesia compared with RLB. The analgesic effect of RLB provides advantages compared with EPSB, SCPB, etc.Based on the results of this review, RLB can be applied to thoracic surgery, abdominal surgery and parotid surgery, but its analgesic effect is not significant enough, and further research is needed in the future to provide stronger evidence for postoperative analgesia in surgical patients.