Intraperitoneal Bupivicaine Infusion Using the On-Q Pain Pump After Laparoscopic Surgery

After Laparoscopic surgery most patients experience some form of mild to moderate pain. The current standard of care is to treat this pain with local anesthetics (numbing medication, that deadens the nerve endings) to the small surgical incisions (cuts) and narcotic systemic analgesics (medication injected into your vein to control pain such as morphine). Although this treatment improves pain symptoms it is not perfect. Firstly, complete pain control is rarely achieved and secondly, narcotics (such as morphine) often have many side effects including nausea, vomiting, sedation (sleepiness), constipation and abdominal upset. All of these issues make recovery less comfortable and delays return to full function (work, school and other activities of daily life). A new FDA approved device is now available that offers the benefits of long term anesthesia without the side effects of narcotics. It consists of a pump that continuously infuses local anesthesia into and around the surgical site. This pump is placed during your operation. You then carry a tennis ball sized container made of soft plastic in a pouch which drips numbing medicine around your wounds for 2 days continuously. The purpose of this study is to see if this pump improves postoperative pain, decreases the need for narcotic pain medicine and allows people to return to their activities earlier.