Effect of Oxygen Therapy on Tourniquet-Associated Pain inHand Trauma Patients

The cause of pain when using a tourniquet is not yet verified. If there is an acknowledgment of the role of ischemia in this connection, it can be suggested by the intervention of oxygen supply that the pain be reduced. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of oxygenation on the amount of pain when using the tourniquet for patients with hand surgery in an achademic hospital between the beginning of 1394 and the end of 1395.

This study was a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial of patient with hand truma. Participants received either 50% inhaled oxygen or air placebo via a face mask for 3 minutes before and up to 30 minutes after upper arm tourniquet inflation to 250 mmHg. Pain scores were recorded at 2-minute intervals using a validated 100-mm visual analogue scale. Data analysis was performed using SPSS software.

385 participants enrolled and, after exclusion criteria were applied, 200 were analyzed (oxygen, n = 100; air, n = 100). On average, at all points in the intervention, oxygen decreased the relative number of pain in the oxygen group compared to the placebo group to 10 mm difference in the pain visual analogue scale. Oxygen also significantly extended the time to reach visual analogue scale score of 40 mm (p=0.008).

It seems that Oxygen is a readily available, low-risk, low-cost treatment that significantly reduced tourniquet-associated pain in this study and significantly increased the time taken to reach visual analogue scale score of 40 or more. The authors recommend oxygen to facilitate hand surgery under a tourniquet.