Papers of the Week

Severe postsurgical pain in posterior spinal fusion is common. Multimodality analgesia, including opioid-based patient-controlled analgesia (PCA), is commonly used, but opioid-related adverse events such as nausea and vomiting are sometimes a problem. We used a ropivacaine-epinephrine-dexamethasone mixture given as one-time local bilateral submyofascial injections at the operated levels added to conventional multimodality analgesia including PCA for postoperative pain control in one group of patients to confirm whether administration of this mixture reduced postoperative pain and opioid use status post posterior spinal fusion.