Assessing the Effectiveness of Combined Analgesics for Bilateral Ramus Osteotomies

Pain management is important for alleviating patients' suffering and early recovery. Although analgesic combinations are known to be effective, a comparison of the effectiveness of different combinations has never been performed specifically for ramus osteotomy procedures. Therefore, the purpose of this observational retrospective cohort study was to identify an effective combination for pain management throughout the intraoperative and immediate postoperative period for patients undergoing bilateral ramus osteotomy procedures. Inclusion criteria consisted of patients who had undergone bilateral mandibular ramus osteotomies over a 2-year period. The analyzed predictor variables included patient gender, age, body weight, operation, anesthetic method, duration of operation, intraoperative use of fentanyl, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and intravenous acetaminophen administered in the operating room at the end of the surgery. The outcome variable was the necessity for additional rescue analgesics (yes/no) in the recovery room. Bivariate statistics and multivariate analysis were computed with a p-value of <0.05. The study sample was comprised of 78 patients requiring bilateral mandibular ramus osteotomies. From the multivariate analysis, the combination of NSAIDs-acetaminophen-fentanyl was an independent factor for no additional rescue analgesics during the first 1 hour after bilateral ramus osteotomies, indicating that the combination is significantly effective for bilateral ramus osteotomies compared with the other combinations. Considering that this study consisted of a small sample size, the results of this study suggest that some of the combinations, particularly NSAIDs-acetaminophen-fentanyl, are more effective than NSAIDs alone for postoperative pain control immediately following bilateral ramus osteotomy procedures.