Intravenous or Intra-abdominal Local Anesthetics for Postoperative Pain Management.

Local anesthetics (LA) are increasingly used for postoperative pain management. Speicifically, several studies have found benefit of LA injected intra-abdominally following abdominal hysterectomy. However, it remains unclear whether the pain relief seen is due to local anesthetic mechanisms within the abdominal cavity or through systemic absorption. The aim of this study is to assess whether lidocaine administered intravenously has similar analgesic efficacy as the same dose administered intra-abdominally in patients undergoing abdominal hysterectomy. All patients would have rescue analgesia using the patient controlled analgesia (PCA) pump with morphine in order to achieve adequate pain management during 24 h.