Conditions: Lumbar Spine Fusion Pain Back Pain
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 17
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
1. Protocol Title - A Comparison of Epidural Analgesia with Standard Care Following Lumbar Spinal Fusion: A Prospective Randomized Study
2. Purpose of the Study - This prospective randomized study will enroll 200 patients undergoing elective Lumbar Spinal Fusion at Duke University Hospital. The primary objective is to determine the effect of epidural analgesia, as compared with standard care, on post-operative analgesia.

Hypothesis:

The investigators hypothesize that patients undergoing Lumbar Spinal Fusion surgery with epidural catheter placement will have superior post-operative analgesia compared to patients undergoing standard care.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: This is the standard of care method for post-operative analgesia following lumbar spine fusion surgery. Participants randomly assigned to this arm will receive Intravenous Patient-Controlled Analgesia (IVPCA) with dilaudid (or other opioid) for post-operative pain control. arm 2: The intervention to be tested in this study against standard intravenous opioids is infusion of local anesthetic and dilaudid via epidural catheter for post-operative pain control in patients undergoing lumbar spine fusion surgery.

Interventions: intervention 1: Epidural Catheter - Dilaudid intervention 2: Dilaudid
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Placement of an epidural catheter to administer local anesthetic and opioid (dilaudid) to the epidural space will be studied as compared to use of intravenous opioid (dilaudid) for pain control following lumbar spine fusion surgery. intervention 2: Patients in this arm will receive intravenous patient-controlled opioid analgesia (Dilaudid).

Protocol document: