Tabish Hussain, Asifa Anwar Mir, Jawad Zahir, Pervaiz Minhas.
Use of pregabalin as a pre-medication for post-operative pain in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy.
J Islamabad Med Dent Coll Jan ;8(1):29-33.

Background: Postoperative pain creates complications by increasing circulating level of catecholamines and systemic vascular resistance, thus putting the patients on increased risks of having stroke and myocardial infarction. In addition, it increases hospital stay, causing burden over economic as well as healthcare infrastructure. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of pain in the postoperative period while using Pregabalin as pre-medication among patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy.Material and Methods: The randomized control trail was conducted at Department of Anesthesiology, Holy Family hospital, Rawalpindi from 1st Sept 2015 to 28th Feb 2016 over a period of 6 months. A total of 200 patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy were randomly divided in group A and B by consecutive non-probability lottery method. Group A received 100 mg oral Pregabalin 1 hour before surgery and Group B were not given Pregabalin and were taken as controls. Post-operative pain was measured by visual analog scale (VAS) in terms of pain scores at 4 hours postoperatively after the arrival of patient in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU). SPSS version 17.0 was used to analyze the data.Results: A total of 200 patients were included in the study. There were 100 patients in each group. Based on the visual analog pain scores, 9 patients were pain free in group A compared with none in group B. Similarly, there were 55 patients in group A, who reported a pain score of 1 whereas no patient in group B had a VAS score of 1. There were 29 patients in group A and only 3 patients in group B with VAS score of 2 (90.6% vs. 9.4%). For VAS score of 3, there were 6 patients in group A and 34 patients from group B (15% vs. 85%). For a VAS score of 4, there were 1 patient in group A and 61 patients in group B (1.6% vs. 98.4%). Two patients in group B experienced a VAS score of 5. All this data was significant with chi square p value of 0.0001.Conclusion: Oral Pregabalin administered prior to laparoscopic cholecystectomy was effective in reducing postoperative pain in the patients. Further studies are needed for post-operative evaluation of side effects, different dosing schedules at different time intervals for both rest and dynamic pain.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com