Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
Volume:1 Issue: 4, May 2012

Pain after total knee arthroplasty is severe and impacts functional recovery. We performed a retrospective study, comparing conventional patient control analgesia (PCA) modalities versus continuous femoral nerve blockade (CFNB) for 1582 post-TKA (total knee arthroplasty) patients.Patients and Using our electronic acute pain service (APS) database, we reviewed the data of 579 patients who had received CFNBs compared with 1003 patients with intravenous PCA over 4 years. Our results show that the incidence of a severe pain episode was higher in the PCA compared with the CFNB group. Lower pain scores were observed in the CFNB group compared with the PCA group from postoperative day (POD) 1 to 3, primarily due to lower rest pain scores in the CFNB group. Our study shows that there is improvement in pain scores, at rest and on movement, as well as a reduction in incidence of severe pain, in patients who receive CFNB versus those who receive intravenous PCA..

The control of postoperative pain is important in children, and poor pain control leads to organ dysfunction and behavioral problems. We compared the analgesic effects of suppository acetaminophen, bupivacaine wound infiltration, and caudal block with bupivacaine on postoperative pain in pediatric inguinal herniorrhaphy.Patients and In this double-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial, 90 children of American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grade I-II, aged between 3 months and 7 years, and scheduled for elective unilateral inguinal herniorrhaphy under general anesthesia were assigned to three equal groups. Patients in the first group received 20 mg/kg of suppository acetaminophen. In the second group, 2 mg/kg of 0.5% bupivacaine was infiltrated in the incisional site, and in the third group, a caudal block was performed with 0.75 mL/kg of 0.25% bupivacaine. The Face, Legs, Activity, Cry, Consolability (FLACC) pain scale was applied 30 minutes after operation. Thereafter, the FLACC score was obtained every hour during the next 6 hours. If the FLACC score was 4 or over, we administered 0.5 mg/kg of intravenous meperidine. The data was transferred to SPSS-10 software and analyzed statistically with chi-square and analysis of variance tests. P < 0.05 was considered significant. The mean analgesic duration in the acetaminophen, bupivacaine infiltration, and caudal block groups was 4.07, 5.40, and 5.37 hours, respectively. Significant differences were not observed between the bupivacaine infiltration and caudal block groups (P = 0.9), but the differences between the bupivacaine infiltration and acetaminophen groups (P = 0.034) and the caudal block and acetaminophen groups (P = 0.039) were significant. With regard to meperidine administration, significant differences were not observed between the bupivacaine infiltration and caudal block groups (P = 0.848), but significant differences were observed between these two groups and the acetaminophen group (P < 0.05). Patients in the bupivacaine infiltration and caudal block groups had less postoperative pain than those in the acetaminophen group and received lower amount of meperidine. We concluded that in children, bupivacaine infiltration and caudal block with bupivacaine produce better analgesia than suppository acetaminophen. It seems that bupivacaine infiltration is better than caudal block because of its simplicity, lower incidence of complications, and failure rate..

Midazolam is a water soluble benzodiazepine which is frequently administered by intravenous and oral routes in our institution. Its nasal spray has become recently available. To compare the efficacy of midazolam administered orally and by intranasal spray, with the specific objective of assessing their efficacy in terms of acceptability to the patients, whether they achieve a satisfactory sedation score, and the overall ease of inducing general anesthesia.Patients and Sixty healthy children of ASA grade I or II, aged 2-6 years who were undergoing elective surgery of approximately 30 minutes duration, were assigned to receive midazolam premedication in a randomized controlled trial. They were divided into 2 groups of 30 patients each. Group I: 30 patients received midazolam orally (parenteral solution mixed in honey). Group II: 30 patients received a commercially available midazolam nasal spray. The study shows that children better accepted the drug when administered orally than when administered intranasally, although satisfactory sedation scores at 10 and 20 minutes were better in the nasal spray group than in the oral group [i.e., 6 (20%) vs. 0 (0%) at 10 min and 16 (53.3%) vs. 13 (43.3%), respectively]. Satisfactory ease of induction scores [24 (80%) vs. 13 (43.3%)], recovery times [11.63 ± 4.19 minutes vs. 25.20 ± 9.36 minutes], and post-anesthesia recovery scores were better in the nasal spray group (group II) than in the oral group (group I). On the basis of our study, we conclude that nasal midazolam spray is acceptable and is a good alternative to oral midazolam as premedication in the pediatric population.

Blood loss in spine surgery is an important issue, even though it has been understudied compared with hip and knee arthroplasty. In this study, we evaluated the effect of oral clonidine as premedication on blood loss in lumbar spine fusion surgery under anesthesia with propofol and remifentanil.Patients and In this double-blind, randomized clinical trial, 30 patients who were undergoing lumbar spine posterior fusion surgery due to traumatic fracture were allocated randomly into 2 groups. The study group (clonidine group) received a 200-µg oral clonidine tablet 60-90 minutes before anesthesia, and the control group received placebo at the same time. Induction and maintenance of anesthesia and the mean target arterial pressure for controlled hypotension with remifentanil were the same in the 2 groups. We compared the amount of intraoperative blood loss, dose of remifentanil/hour administered, need for nitroglycerine to reach the mean target arterial pressure when remifentanil was insufficient, duration of operation, and surgeon’s satisfaction of a bloodless field between groups. There was no statistically significant difference between groups in age (P = 0.115), sex (P = 0.439), weight (P = 0.899), operation time (P = 0.2), or American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status score (P = 0.390). Intraoperative blood loss and remifentanil dose administered per hour in the clonidine group were significantly less than in the control group (P = 0.002 and P = 0.001, respectively), but there was no significant difference in surgeon’s satisfaction between groups (P = 0.169). As an oral premedication, clonidine can reduce surgical blood loss in lumbar spine posterior fusion surgery, even at the same levels of mean arterial pressure (MAP) with the control group. Its use can be studied in more complicated spine surgeries, such as scoliosis and spinal deformity surgeries.

Pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) treatment is defined as the delivery of short pulses of radiofrequency via a needle tip, which does not result in an actual thermal lesions. There are mixed views regarding the use of PRF for trigeminal neuralgia (TN). In our opinion, one of the main reasons for the contrasting views is the insufficient PRF dose employed in previous studies. In a recent study on the effects of PRF on resiniferatoxininduced neuropathic pain in an animal model, the anti-allodynic effects of PRF were significantly greater when the PRF exposure duration was increased from 2 to 6 minutes. The primary objective of this retrospective study is to report the results for 36 consecutive patients who underwent PRF treatment for TN, for 6 minutes at 45 V at a pulsed frequency of 4 Hz and a pulse width of 10 ms.Patients and For the study, we obtained procedural records of 36 consecutive patients. Their current state of pain was evaluated over a telephonic survey and the post-procedural data at 2, 6, and 12 months were retrieved thereafter from the patient records. The main outcome measure was excellent pain relief (more than 80%), which was assessed at 2, 6, and 12 months.The percentages of patients who showed excellent pain relief (> 80% pain relief) at 2, 6, and 12 months were 73.5% (25/34), 61.8% (21/34), and 55.9% (19/34), respectively. The percentages of patients showing satisfactory pain relief (50–80% pain relief) at 2, 6, and 12 months were 14.7% (5/34), 17.6% (6/34), and 17.6% (6/34), respectively, and those of patients showing less than satisfactory pain relief (< 50% pain relief) at 2, 6, and 12 months were 11.8% (4/34), 20.6% (7/34), and 23.5% (8/34), respectively. No complications were reported, and none of the patients required hospitalization. PRF of the trigeminal ganglion should be further evaluated as an alternative treatment method for TN.

Oxycodone is widely used to alleviate moderate-to severe acute pain, It is an effective analgesic for many types of pain, and is especially useful for paroxysmal spontaneous pain, steady pain, allodynia associated with postherpetic neuralgia, and it is also increasingly used in the management of cancer-related and chronic pain, oxycodone has been found to improve the quality of life of patients with many types of pain.In 2011, following chemical and physical manipulation, an extended-release form of oxycodone was developed in order to maintain its rate-controlling mechanism. This new formulation significantly improved analgesia among patients with moderate-to-severe chronic osteoarthritis pain with an adverse event profile similar to that of other opioids. The long-term safety and efficacy of extended-release form of oxycodone in relieving moderate-to-severe chronic pain has been demonstrated. In this study we discussed about different aspects of this drug in managing of various types of pain.