Which is better--epidural or patient-controlled analgesia after surgery?

Depends: It very much depends on what type of surgery is being done. Epidural analgesia works very well for some thoracic and some abdominal or pelvic surgery. Patient controlled analgesia is most common after surgery. You would need to confer with your surgeon and your anesthesiologist which may be best or most appropriate for the specific surgery.

Both!: There is a relatively novel form of perioperative pain relief known as patient-controlled epidural analgesia(or pcea). It's similar to pca in that you as the patient control how much medication you receive. However, instead of the medication being delivered to your veins, it's delivered to your epidural space, where it is more effective and less likely to produce systemic side effects.

Depends: If you are speaking about abdominal surgery, both are effective, but the epidural should be a thoracic epidural. It really depends on the practice of your surgeon and aneshesiologists. Open vs. Laparoscopic abdominal surgery. Overall for abdominal surgery, it is best to minimize narcotic use, pca, epidural or oral.

Depends: It depends on what surgery you are having, and what the expertise of your anesthesiologist is. Pca is a means of the patient giving themselves intravenous narcotic. Epidural anesthetic can be very good for some types of surgery, and there is also continuous epidural anesthesia for some situations. You should confer with your surgeon and your anesthesiologist as to what is best for your condition.