A novel regional approach for anaesthesia in major abdominal oncosurgeries: The EPIMENTAL case series

The incidence of cancer and need for cancer surgeries has increased in recent times probably due to widespread prevention campaigns and availability of modern diagnostic tools. General anaesthesia is currently the most extensively used technique but is not only associated with many adverse outcomes but also have deleterious effect on cancer survival. With the modernisation of anaesthetic strategy, focus is slowly shifting towards the regional techniques because of potential in maintaining better physiological functions perioperatively. We have phased in a novel technique of regional anaesthesia i.e. the EPIMENTAL approach, and conducted a case series on five cancer patients who underwent major abdominal oncosurgeries, with the hypothesis of maintaining a streamlined level of non-overlapping segment of dermatome block. Introduction of Epimental approach, might pave a newer dimension in the world of regional anaesthesia in terms of maintaining a better haemodynamic profile of the cancer patients.