Lumbar ESPB in Hip Replacement Surgery

This is a prospective trial in patients undergoing elective hip replacement surgery. Written informed consent will be obtained from each patient, and our study will be conducted following the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki for medical research involving human subjects. Before the surgery, preoperative pain severity, chronic pain severity, and ability to sit, stand, and walk will be assessed. Each participant will be anesthetized with spinal technique and randomly allocated patients according to postoperative analgesia to the continuous epidural (Epidural) group and the continuous lumbar erector spinae plane block (ESPB) group. Both regional techniques will be continued during the first day. Investigators will measure postoperative oxycodone consumption with a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump. At several points, the patients' pain at rest and during activity will be evaluated on the visual analog scale (VAS, 0-10), their quadriceps femoris muscle strength on the Lovett scale (0-5), and their ability to sit, stand upright, and walk on the Timed Up and Go test. Moreover, the patient's recovery will be assessed through the Quality of Recovery 40 (QoR-40) questionnaire on the first postoperative day. After the patient's discharge, information regarding acute and chronic pain severity and quality of recovery will be collected during the phone interview.