Exploring the rationale of performing vaginal hysterectomy under local anaesthesia: A single-centre experience.

Introduction: Vaginal hysterectomy (VH) is usually performed under general (GA) or regional anaesthesia. In recent years, the possibility of performing vaginal hysterectomy under local anaesthesia (LA) has also been explored. Our aim was to compare intraoperative and early postoperative outcomes in women who underwent VH under LA with intravenous sedation or GA.

Methods: In this retrospective study, we collected data of patients who underwent VH at our department from June 2021 to December 2022. For every patient, the following data was obtained: hospitalisation duration, type of anaesthesia (LA or GA), accompanying procedures, the dosage of used local anaesthetic in the LA group, maximal pain score for each day of hospitalisation after the procedure, procedure duration, intraoperative blood loss, and postoperative complication rate. Data was analysed using the SPSS Statistics programme. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.

Results: Seventy patients were included in the study. The mean age was significantly higher in the LA group compared to GA group (73.8 ± 8.0 years vs. 67.1 ± 9.3 respectively, p-value = 0.003). LA was associated with statistically lower pain scores in the first two days after the procedure (p = 0.003), and shorter procedure duration (p-value <0.001) as well as hospitalisation duration (p < 0.001). Furthermore, the cumulative dosage of different analgesics used during hospitalisation was higher in the GA group.

Conclusions: Our results show that LA is a feasible option for patients undergoing VH. Vaginal surgical procedures under LA could be especially beneficial for older patients with medical comorbidities in whom GA would be particularly hazardous.