Laparoscopy is becoming one of the most common surgical procedures performed on an outpatient basis. Technical advances in the field of endoscopic surgery, such as the miniaturization of instruments, the use of “gasless” endoscopy, and the use of more efficient lighting techniques, will help to reduce surgical trauma and discomfort and thereby widen the scope of laparoscopy. The driving forces behind such techniques are that anesthetic requirements will be reduced and result in an abbreviated hospital stay.

Socioeconomic pressures from limited healthcare resources and the constant strife for optimizing patient care lead researchers to seek anesthetic techniques with minimal morbidity for such procedures. General anesthesia as the only suitable technique for laparoscopic procedures is a concept of the past. A problem with modern general anesthetics is that even though patients can be awake and oriented shortly after cessation of the anesthetic, these agents do not facilitate postoperative analgesia or an emesis-free recovery, two important problems associated with laparoscopy. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that regional anesthesia has an important role to play in the care of patients undergoing laparoscopy. The scope of regional anesthesia depends on the creativeness of surgeons and anesthesiologists, and patient acceptance. This article proposes to outline various ways of using regional anesthesia for patients undergoing laparoscopic abdominal surgery.