The preemptive analgesic effect of lornoxicam in patients undergoing major abdominal surgery: a randomised controlled...

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of lornoxicam used in preemptive analgesia on the intensity of pain and requirement for analgesics in the perioperative period for major abdominal surgery.

Sixty patients scheduled for elective major abdominal surgery were randomly assigned to three groups after ethics committee approval. Patients in Group PRE (n=20) received lornoxicam i.v. 8 mg 20 min before incision and saline i.v. after skin closure; patients in Group POST (n=20) received saline i.v. 20 mins before incision and lornoxicam i.v. 8 mg after skin closure; patients in Group C (n=20) received saline i.v. 5 min before incision and after skin closure. A standardized general anesthetic was used. All patients were started on i.v. tramadol patient-controlled analgesia during the postoperative period. Pain intensity was measured using the visual analog scale (VAS), and tramadol consumption. In addition, the incidences of side effects were recorded at the end of the study period.

There were no significant differences among the three groups of the demographic data. Groups PRE and POST demonstrated significantly reduced pain scores compared to Group C at various points in time. Group PRE also demonstrated a weakly significant reduction in analgesic consumption of tramadol postoperatively compared to Groups POST and C.

Lornoxicam administered preemptively appears to improve the quality of postoperative analgesia and leads to reduced consumption of tramadol postoperatively in patients undergoing major abdominal operations.