Abstract: OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of epidural analgesia on postoperative infection and inflammatory indexes of patients with thoracic surgery, so as to find a way to reduce the incidence of postoperative infections. METHODS A total of 184 cases of patients underwent open chest surgery in our hospital from Jan. 2012 to Jan. 2015 were selected, and randomly divided into observation group and control group by single blind method, with 92 cases in each group. Patients in control group were given conventional anti-inflammatory and analgesic oral, intramuscular injection, and in observation group were given conventional anti-inflammatory and patient-controlled epidural analgesia. The infection of of the two groups within 5d after surgery was observed. RESULTS The infection rate of observation group was 3.26%, which was lower than 11.96% of control group (P<0.05). The inflammatory indexes high sensitive C reactive protein (hs-CRP), tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8) and recombinant human interleukin-1β(IL-1β) of the two groups had no significant difference. One day after surgery, the inflammatory indexes of observation group were lower than those of 3 d after surgery and those of control group at the same time (P<0.05), and 3 d after surgery, those of observation group were higher than those of before surgery, and lower than those of control group at the same time (P<0.05). CONCLUSION Postoperative epidural analgesia can reduce postoperative pain, improve lung function and reduce the level of inflammatory factors, so as to reduce the incidence of postoperative infection, and it is worthy of clinical promotion.