Bupivacaine infiltration for acute postoperative pain management after cardiac surgery

Despite increased attention, acute and persistent post-operative pain are not treated efficiently and interventions against acute pain are therefore of clinical importance and should be welcomed.

To evaluate the effectiveness of wound infiltration with 0.5% bupivacaine for pain management in the immediate post-operative period in patients that underwent cardiac surgery with sternotomy.

The study was performed employing a single-centre nonrandomized experimental design to evaluate a prospective cohort of patients recruited from June to December of 2017.

A single-centre study with a non-randomized experimental design compared the pain perceived by 137 patients undergoing to cardiac surgery within which 68 patients who received infiltration of bupivacaine and 69 patients received infiltration with saline solution. Pain measures were made with the numeric rating scale (NRS) at 2, 12, 24, and 48 hours. Socio-demographic and clinical variables were included too and descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed.

A statistically significant difference was found between the means of the NRS scores in favour of the intervention group. Cohen's d showed a significant effect size. NRS scores were grouped into NRS ≥4 or NRS <4 and similar results were found. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed the absence of confounding factors that could call results into question.

Subcutaneous infiltration of 0.5% bupivacaine in the surgical site of patients who have undergone cardiac surgery showed clinically and statistically significant pain relief compared with patients who received saline infiltration throughout the first 12 hours after surgery. This intervention provides promising preliminary results that, alone or in conjunction with other nursing interventions, could constitute an important therapeutic tool for this area of nursing clinical practice.