Perioperative pain management in cardiac surgery: a systematic review.

CONCLUSIONS: Over the past 17 years, opioids are still the most extensively used therapy, whereas we found only few trials investigating other drugs (e.g. paracetamol). Regional anesthesia techniques, especially thoracic epidural analgesia and intrathecal morphine administration, can effectively treat pain, but have not yet showed any significant impact on major clinical outcomes, with several concern related to their potential complications. To date multimodal analgesia with implementation of regional analgesia seems to be the best choice. In the future, better-designed studies should consider other drugs stratifying groups according to comorbidities and risk factors, as well as using standardized units of measurement. PMID: 29027773 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Minerva Anestesiologica - Category: Anesthesiology Tags: Minerva Anestesiol Source Type: research