New local anesthetic.....

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I will look into that! 

Is this in addition to general anesthesia? 

I woke up numb from my tt and obviously back in 2006 that did not exist.  I never felt lots of pain, it is more pressure and tightness.  It sounds good though if it helps, some people think tt is very painful, I didn't.

Exparel is a Marcaine type of local anesthetic that has a slow release and gives pain control for 72hours versus about 12 hours for Marcaine. It is quite expensive but patients can receive it.

Quick update on my experience with Exparel. I'm 1.5 weeks out and doing pretty well--my surgeon was very pleased with my results when I saw him at 6 days out, and I'm feeling pretty good. Today is my first day with no narcotic pain med and that feels really good. I'm ready for a nap but have a few things to do this afternoon and evening, so there will be no nap today. Tomorrow I will take it easy.

Anyway, the Exparel. I've had open abdominal surgery before (last one was summer of 2007) and I was in the hospital for 5 full days (WITH a PCA pump) before my pain was under control enough for the doc to feel comfortable sending me home. This time around, I went home the next day. When I woke from anesthesia, my entire abdomen was numb. It took a while for my addled brain to figure it out but in the end, I realized it felt like a rectangular area where the numbness was. The pain I had came from around the edges of the rectangular area. It was weird. :)  I needed fentanyl in the PACU, but I think it was only one shot. Once I was transferred to a room, my pain was controlled with percocet pills. I cannot tolerate two pills at a time (makes me itchy) but one at a time was fine. And that's all I needed (every 4 hours). No pain pump or anything. This was a much more involved surgery than the last one, so I was very pleasantly surprised at how much it did NOT hurt compared with the last open ab surgery. Yes, there was still pain, but zero comparison between the two.

So if you have the chance to have Exparel with your abdominoplasty, it gets two thumbs up in my book. :)