Abdominal surgery can cause significant postoperative pain and associated morbidity. Systemic opioids often contribute to side-effects such as sedation, respiratory depression, nausea and vomiting. Postoperative epidural analgesia offers superior analgesia and reduced pulmonary morbidity compared to systemic analgesia 1 , however several reports have alluded to a recent decline in its utilisation following abdominal surgery 2-4. This has occurred on a background of large clinical trials that have failed to demonstrate improved survival following major surgery 1,5 and large studies focusing on morbidity due to epidural analgesia 6-8. Although neurological disability following central neuraxial block is rare, medicolegal concerns can dominate clinical decision-making regarding anaesthesia options. Postoperative epidural analgesia requires ongoing clinical care and surveillance, whereas systemic opioids may have less demand on clinical resources. Furthermore, there is a current trend towards minimally invasive surgical procedures, hence an increasing role for emerging less invasive analgesia techniques. One less invasive analgesic technique is transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block. This technique involves injection of local anaesthetic into the fascial plane between internal oblique and transversus abdominis muscles, where the thoracolumbar nerves T6 to L1 course before innervating the anterior abdominal wall 9. Results from three randomised control trials, utilising anatomical landmark techniques have