Pain Relieving Effect of Sublingual Glycerol Trinitrate in Renal Colic: a Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial

Renal colic is caused by colicky spasms of ureters. As has been shown in previous experiments, glycerol trinitrate (TNG) can inhibit these muscular spasms.

This study was performed to assess the pain relieving effect of TNG among patients referred due to renal colic pain to the emergency department (ED).

This study is a randomized, placebo-controlled study on 60 patients with renal colic who were referred to the ED, who were diagnosed clinically to have renal colic, and their pain was more than 5 based on a visual analogue scale (VAS). The patient's pain was recorded at the moment of clinical diagnosis, and each one received one capsule, either 0.4 mg TNG or placebo, plus a 100 mg indomethacin suppository. The pain score was re-assessed after 5 and 30 min. The values were recorded and compared using SPSS-16 software.

Sixty patients with a mean age of 35.75 ± 11.99 years were enrolled (73.3% male). Patients in the two groups were matched for age (p = 0.290), sex (p = 0.559), and the presence of microscopic hematuria (p = 0.292). Pain relief from the start point until the end of the intervention was statistical different in all studied patients (p < 0.05); but the comparison between the two groups showed no significant difference in this regard (p = 0.440).

It is likely that adding TNG to an indomethacin suppository had no significant effects on better pain management of patients referred with renal colic to the ED.