Monika Gandhi, Nidhi Sharma, Divya Rana, Shalini Jain
Post-operative pain control in children undergoing lower abdominal surgery remains a concern because single-shot caudal analgesia has limited duration. Therefore, it is of interest to compare ultrasound-guided quadratus lumborum block and caudal block in 70 children, with 35 patients each in Group-QL and Group-C. Baseline age and gender distribution were comparable between the groups, with p = 0.580 and p = 0.550 respectively, while time to first rescue analgesia was significantly longer in Group-QL than Group-C (9.60 ± 0.59 h versus 3.37 ± 0.49 h, p = 0.001). Thus, ultrasound-guided quadratus lumborum block provided longer overall Post-operative analgesia, with significant difference in FLACC score at selected Post-operative time points.