Oral morphine versus ibuprofen administered at home for postoperative orthopedic pain in children: a randomized controlled trial.

Oral morphine versus ibuprofen administered at home for postoperative orthopedic pain in children: a randomized controlled trial. CMAJ. 2017 Oct 10;189(40):E1252-E1258 Authors: Poonai N, Datoo N, Ali S, Cashin M, Drendel AL, Zhu R, Lepore N, Greff M, Rieder M, Bartley D Abstract BACKGROUND: Oral morphine for postoperative pain after minor pediatric surgery, while increasingly popular, is not supported by evidence. We evaluated whether oral morphine was superior to ibuprofen for at-home management of children's postoperative pain. METHODS: We conducted a randomized superiority trial comparing oral morphine (0.5 mg/kg) with ibuprofen (10 mg/kg) in children 5 to 17 years of age who had undergone minor outpatient orthopedic surgery (June 2013 to September 2016). Participants took up to 8 doses of the intervention drug every 6 hours as needed for pain at home. The primary outcome was pain, according to the Faces Pain Scale - Revised, for the first dose. Secondary outcomes included additional analgesic requirements, adverse effects, unplanned health care visits and pain scores for doses 2 to 8. RESULTS: We analyzed data for 77 participants in each of the morphine and ibuprofen groups. Both interventions decreased pain scores with no difference in efficacy. The median difference in pain score before and after the first dose of medication was 1 (interquartile range 0-1) for both morphine and ibuprofen (p = 0.2). For doses 2 t...
Source: cmaj - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: CMAJ Source Type: research