Effect of Transauricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation on Postoperative Pain Management in Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery

Participants enrolled will have a commercial transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation unit (tVNS501,RISHENA,Changzhou,China) attached to their left outer ear after VATS. The stimulation pulses will target at the cymba concha which is 100% dominated by the auricular branch of the vagus nerve. Stimulation pulses will be 25Hz in frequency according to current clinical research, 500µs in pulse width which has been suggested to be most biologically active, with its amplitude increasing to the maximum amount that the patients can tolerate without pain.

The only thing differs with the taVNS group is that the device will automatically shut down after running for 15 seconds.