Adductor Canal Versus Femoral Nerve Block for Analgesia Post Total Knee Arthroscopy

Overview

Total knee arthroplasty or replacement (TKA) is a surgery performed for osteoarthritis of the knee which is increasingly performed as the population ages. It is a painful surgery and one of the methods to reduce post-operative pain is performing a regional anaesthesia technique. The current practice is to perform a femoral nerve block (FNB) which blocks the nerves supplying the knee joint and the thigh muscles (quadriceps). This provides effective analgesia. However, it also results in weakness of the quadriceps and may result in falls post-operatively. Adductor canal block (ACB) is a new, alternative regional anaesthesia technique which is hypothesised to provide as effective analgesia, with less quadriceps weakness compared to FNB, hence potentially reducing the risk of falls post-operatively. Investigators aim to study if the analgesia provided by ACB is as good as FNB while preserving quadriceps strength.

Conditions

Interventions