Introduction:

postoperative pain associated with thoracic surgery is generally severe both in intensity and duration. Its inadequate management conditions the appearance of physical and psychological complications such as chronic post-thoracotomy pain syndrome.

Objective:

to evaluate the results of postoperative analgesia with continuous paravertebral block in patients undergoing elective thoracic surgery.

Methods:

A quasi-experimental non-observational study was conducted at the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Surgical Clinical Teaching Provincial Hospital of Camagüey, between June 2016 and June 2019. The universe was constituted by 40 patients submitted to elective thoracic surgery for intrathoracic tumors and to whom postoperative analgesia was applied. Analgesia techniques were compared by dividing the sample into 2 groups.

Results:

There were no differences between groups in terms of pain intensity perception (p<0,05), but most patients (75,0 %) required rescue analgesia, with no differences between groups in this aspect (p=0,144). Most patients reported being satisfied with the treatment. The most frequent complication was pruritus, being present in 37,5 % of patients.

Conclusions:

It is concluded in this work that the application of continuous thoracic paravertebral block is as effective as epidural block in the postoperative analgesic treatment of patients undergoing elective thoracic surgery.

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