Efficacy, safety, and impact on procedural outcomes of local anesthesia in endoscopic submucosal dissection: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) has revolutionized the treatment of early stage gastrointestinal cancers. However, ESD can be associated with increased postprocedural pain and higher complication rates. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the efficacy and safety of local anesthesia.

Methods: A comprehensive search was conducted to identify relevant randomized controlled trials investigating the effect of local anesthesia in ESD procedures. The Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized trials was used to assess study quality. A meta-analysis was performed using Review Manager 5.4, with summary measures expressed as pooled odds ratios (OR) or mean differences with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Results: Four randomized controlled trials with 296 patients undergoing ESD procedures were included. The use of local anesthesia did not significantly impact procedural time (mean difference = -2.05, 95% CI = -9.29, 5.18, I² = 30%, P = 0.58). Lastly, the use of local anesthesia did not increase the risk of bleeding or other adverse events (P > 0.05) and decreased the incidence of bradycardia (OR = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.03, 0.95; I² = 0%; P = 0.04).

Conclusion: Our study found that the use of local anesthesia did not significantly affect the procedural time of ESD. However, it effectively reduced postoperative pain in some trials with no risk of increased incidence of adverse events.