Patient controlled intravenous opioid analgesia vs. continuous epidural analgesia for pain after intra-abdominal surgery

Continuous epidural analgesia is superior to intravenous opioid patient-controlled analgesia in relieving postoperative pain for up to 72 hours after abdominal surgery.

A Cochrane review [withdrawn from publication] included nine studies with a total of 711 subjects. The patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) group had a higher pain visual analogue scale than the continuous epidural analgesia (CEA) group during 6, 24 and 72 hour periods. The weighted mean difference and 95% confidence interval of resting pain was 1.74 (95% CI 1.30 to 2.19), 0.99 (95% CI 0.65 to 1.33), and 0.63 (95% CI 0.24 to 1.01), respectively. The length of hospital stay and other adverse effects were not statistically different except that the incidence of pruritus was lower in the PCA group, odds ratio of 0.27 (95% CI 0.11 to 0.64).

Ədəbiyyat

1. Werawatganon T, Charuluxananan S. WITHDRAWN: Patient controlled intravenous opioid analgesia versus continuous epidural analgesia for pain after intra-abdominal surgery. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013;(3):CD004088.