Morphine or bupivacaine in controlling postoperative pain in patients subjected to knee joint arthroscopy

Background. We investigated the efficacy of intra - articular bupivacaine with morphine administration after knee joint arthroscopy.
Material and methods. The present study compared intra- arthicular bupivacaine with intra-arthricular morphine for postoperative analgesia in 56 patients (21 women, 35 men) (age 20-70, mean 39.8) undergoing knee joint arthroscopy.
Intraoperatively, the patients received anaesthesia spinaly (0.5 % Marcaine spinal ASTRA) and immediately following surgery received 10 ml intra-arthricular injection consisting either of 0.5 % bupivacaine (group I), 5 mg morphine + 0.9 % saline (group II).Postoperative analgesia was supporeted by intravenous doses of proefferalgan.
In all patients the visual analogue pain score (VAS), PaO2, systolic blood preassure (SABP), diastolic blood preassure (DABP), heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (f), supplemented analgesia and possible side effects were monitored postoperatively.
Results. Intra-arthricular administration of each solution was well toleratede and non side effects were noted.
There was non significant difference among the two groups in monitored parameters. The mean time of postoperative analgesia was 185,7 +/- 25.3 min for bupivacaine group and 390.3 +/- 35,4 min for morphine group.
Total amount proefferalgan supplamentation was the highest in group I.
Conclusions. Postoperative intra- arthricular injections of bupivacaine and morphine for patients undergoing knee joint arthroscopy can provide a safe and effective analgesia and therefore shound be recommended and widely implamented into the clinical use as a standard procedure.