Preoperative dexamethasone for acute post-thoracotomy analgesia: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

The analgesic effects of dexamethasone have been reported previously, and the present study determined the effects of preoperative dexamethasone on postoperative pain in patients who received thoracotomy.

Forty patients participated in this randomized, double-blind study. All patients received either dexamethasone via a 0.1 mg/kg intravenous bolus before anesthetic induction or an equal volume of saline. Postoperative analgesia was provided to both groups via epidural patient-controlled analgesia (PCA), which consisted of 250 μg of sufentanil in 250 mL of ropivacaine (0.18%) for 72 h. The primary outcome was the cumulative consumption of epidural PCA at postoperative 24 and 72 h. The secondary outcomes were the pain intensity scores during resting and coughing at postoperative 24 and 72 h, quality of recovery, total amount of rescue analgesics required, and length of hospital stay.

No significant differences was observed in the consumption of epidural PCA between the control and dexamethasone infusion groups at 24 h (63.6 [55.9-72.7] vs. 68.5 [60.2-89.0] ml, P = 0.281) and 72 h (199.4 [172.4-225.1] vs. 194.7 [169.1-252.2] ml, P = 0.890). Moreover, there was no significant difference in the pain intensity scores during resting and coughing at postoperative 24 and 72 h, quality of recovery, total amount of rescue analgesics required, and length of hospital stay.

A single intravenous administration of dexamethasone during the preoperative period does not reduce opioid consumption and post-thoracotomy pain.

The study was registered at http://cris.nih.go.kr ( KCT0000359 ) and was conducted from December 2011 to October 2012.