Thoracic Epidural versus Intravenous Patient-controlled Analgesia after Cardiac Surgery

Abstract

In elective cardiac surgery, thoracic epidural analgesia combined with general anesthesia followed by patient-controlled thoracic epidural analgesia offers no major advantage with respect to hospital length of stay, quality of recovery, or morbidity when compared with general anesthesia alone followed by to patient-controlled analgesia with intravenous morphine.