Current Strategies in Pain Regimens for Robotic Urologic Surgery: A Comprehensive Review

Context: Robotic surgery is becoming the most common approach in minimally invasive urologic procedures. Robotic surgery o ers less pain to patients because of smaller keyhole incisions and less tissue retraction and stretching of fascia and muscular fibers. Tailored pain regimens have also evolved and allowed patients to feel minimal to no discomfort after robotic urologic surgery, allowing in parallel better surgical outcomes. This study aims to analyze the most current pain regimens in robotic urologic surgery and to evaluate the most current pain protocols and corresponding outcomes. Evidence Acquisition: A literature review was performed of published manuscripts utilizing Pubmed and Google Scholar on pain protocols for patients undergoing robotic urologic surgery. Results: Multimodal analgesia is gaining ground in robotic urologic surgery. Regional analgesia includes four major modalities: Neuroaxial analgesia, intercostal blocks, tranvsersus abdominis plane blocks, and paravertebral blocks. Each approach has a di er-ent injection site, region of analgesia coverage, and duration of coverage depending upon local anesthesia and/or adjuvant utilized with advantages and disadvantages that make each modality unique and eÿcacious. Conclusions: Robotic urologic surgery has o ered the advantage of smaller incisions, faster recovery, less postoperative opioid consumption, and better surgical outcomes. Neuraxial, intercostal, transversus abdominis plane, and quadratus lumborum blocks are the best and most adopted approaches which o er optimal outcomes to patients.