The Effects on Pain Relief of Intraarticular Tramadol and Neostigmine after Knee Arthroscopic Surgery. |
Kyung Joon Lim, Hun Jeong Kim, Kyung Hee Oh, Tae Hun An, Keum Young So, Byung Sik Yu, Chong Dal Chung, Seung Soo Kim |
1Department of Anesthesiology, College of Medicine, Chosun University, Gwangju, Korea. 2Seoul Pain Clinic, Gwangju, Korea. |
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Abstract |
BACKGROUND Evidence has accumulated that tramadol hydrochloride can produce relief of moderate to severe pain across the range of acute and chronic pain states by combining a synergistically weak opioid and a monoaminergically mediated antinociceptive mechanism.
Neostigmine can produce antinociceptive effects by interacting with muscarine receptors in peripheral tissues.
This study was designed to determine whether intraarticular tramadol results in better analgesic effect and whether tramadol and neostigmine would provide superior analgesia to tramadol alone, after knee arthroscopic surgery. METHODS Forty-five ASA class 1 or 2 patients undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery were randomly allocated to three treatment groups. All patients received general anesthesia with nitrous oxide, O2 and inhalational agents. When the surgical procedure was completed, the study drug was injected into the patient's knee joint through the arthroscope. Patients in group 1 (n = 15) received 30 ml of 0.5% mepivacaine; patients in group 2 (n = 15) received tramadol 50 mg and 30 ml of 0.5% mepivacaine; patients in group 3 (n = 15) received a combination of tramadol 50 mg, neostigmine 100 micro gram and 30 ml of 0.5% mepivacaine.
Postoperative pain was assessed using the visual analogue scale (VAS) at 1, 2, 4, 6, 12 and 24 hours after the intraarticular injection. RESULTS There were no significant differences among the three groups in the 1 to 2 hour postoperative period and groups 2 and 3 showed significantly lower VAS score than group 1 from 4 to 24 hours postoperatively. CONCLUSIONS It is concluded that after knee arthroscopy, intraarticular injection of tramadol had a good analgesic effect, whereas neostigmine added to tramadol did not show superior analgesic effects over tramadol alone. |
Key Words:
postoperative; intraarticular; tramadol; neostigmine; arthroscopy |
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