Abstract: OBJECTIVE To explore the influence of different analgesia methods on postoperative infections in pulmonary tuberculosis patients undergoing chest surgery so as to provide guidance for clinical use of antibiotics.METHODS A total of 320 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis who received surgical procedures in Shaoxing Municipal Hospital from Dec 2012 to May 2016 were enrolled in the study, the patients received thoracoscopic partial lung resection, pulmonary bulb resection, and empyema resection, respectively, all of the patients were treated with general anesthesia after conventional epidural catheterization.The enrolled patients were divided into the intravenous analgesia group and the epidural analgesia group according to the method of postoperative analgesia, with 160 cases in each group.The incidence of nosocomial infections and distribution of nosocomial infection sites of the two groups of patients were observed, the culture of body fluid was carried out, the etiological analysis was performed, and the T lymphocyte subsets (CD₄⁺, CD₈⁺, CD₄⁺/CD₈⁺) counts of the two groups of patients were determined before the surgeries and after the analgesia for 2 days.RESULTS Of the 320 patients, 64 had nosocomial infections, with the infection rate 20.00%.The respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, urinary tract, and incision were the major infection sites of the two groups of patients.Totally 64 strains of pathogens were isolated, of which 40 were isolated from the intravenous analgesia group, and 24 were isolated from the epidural analgesia group; the gram-negative bacteria, gram-positive bacteria, and fungi respectively accounted for 72.50%, 25.00%, and 2.50% in the intravenous analgesia group; the gram-negative bacteria, gram-positive bacteria, and fungi respectively accounted for 66.66%, 29.17%, and 4.17% in the epidural analgesia group.The levels of CD₄⁺, CD₈⁺, and CD₄⁺/CD₈⁺ of the two groups of patients were reduced after the analgesia for 2 days, there was significant difference in the level of CD₄⁺ or CD₈⁺ of the intravenous analgesia group or the CD₄⁺ level of the epidural analgesia group before the treatment and after the analgesia for 2 days(P＜0.05).The CD₄⁺/CD₈⁺ level of the intravenous analgesia group and the levels of CD₈⁺ and CD₄⁺/CD₈⁺ of the epidural analgesia group were reduced after the analgesia for 2 days, however, there was no significant difference.CONCLUSIONThe incidence of postoperative infections of the epidural analgesia group is lower than that of the intravenous analgesia group; the two groups of patients are similar to the types of infection and constituent ratios of pathogens.The T lymphocyte subsets change to some extent after the analgesia for 2 days, however, the fluctuation is smaller in the epidural analgesia, and it is necessary to be further studied whether the change of T lymphocyte subsets is associated with the postoperative infections.