Oral pregabalin for acute pain relief after cervicofacial surgery: a systematic review

The objectives of this systematic review were to unify criteria on the effectiveness of oral pregabalin to treat acute post-operative pain after cervicofacial surgery, to establish the most effective dose regimens, and to determine its effect on rescue medicine consumption and its association with adverse effects.

PubMed/Medline (National Library of Medicine, Washington, DC), Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases were searched for studies in any language published between January 2000 and September 2016. The following question was posed, in accordance with PRISMA guidelines: Is oral pregabalin effective and safe for the relief of acute pain after cervicofacial surgery? The critical reading of the literature utilized a list of questions prepared by the CASPe Network, applying the Jadad scale for evaluation of the methodological quality of trials.

Eleven randomized controlled clinical trials were selected. The 11 trials obtained a score ≥ 3, considered as Ib evidence level and high quality. A single oral dose of 75-mg pregabalin before or after cervicofacial surgery alleviates pain and lessens the need for rescue analgesia consumption, while the statistical significance of these effects is higher with a single dose of 150-mg pregabalin, either before or after the surgery.

Oral pregabalin appears to significantly alleviate post-operative pain and reduce rescue analgesia consumption, with no severe adverse effects. However, the ideal dose and most effective administration regimen remain controversial issues that need to be addressed in further high-quality clinical trials.

These findings suggest that pregabalin may be useful for acute pain relief after cervicofacial surgery.