Abstract : Management of pain and obtunding surgical stress response in paediatric cardiac patients has always been a challenge. It can be controlled by various modalities like use of intraoperative IV opioids, increasing depth of anaesthesia with inhalational agents, regional techniques with intrathecal opioids or epidural local anaesthetics with opioids. To find out the effectiveness of high thoracic Epidural anaesthesia in obtunding the surgical stress response in paediatric cardiac surgeries as compared to intravenous opioid infusion. To compare the two groups (Epidural and opiods) in the following aspects: Blood glucose and lactate levels due to surgical stress response. Haemodynamic parameters namely Heart Rate (HR), invasive blood pressure(IBP), continuous central venous oxygen saturation(ScVO2). Post operative ventilation to extubation time. Post operative sedation score (Ramsay sedation Score). The patients in the two groups were comparable with regards to gender. With regards to age, we observed that there were younger patients enrolled in the epidural group as compared to the opioid group. Haemodynamic parameters with use of epidural analgesia rather than IV opioids, both in intraoperative as well as in the post operative period. The baseline Spo2 was found to be overall low in the epidural group, The baseline mixed venous oxygen saturation(ScVo2) was observed to be on the lower side in the epidural group as compared to the opioid group.