[Preoperative flurbiprofen provides pain relief after laparoscopic cholecystectomy]

In a single-blind randomized prospective study, postoperative pain was assessed in 60 patients undergoing elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy with three types of anesthesia: standardized general anesthesia (control group), preoperative 50 mg flurbiprofen as an addition to the same method of general anesthesia (flurbiprofen group), and conventional combined epidural and general anesthesia with epidural administration of 0.25% bupivacaine 5-8 ml and 0.1-0.2 mg buprenorphine after surgery (epidural group). After the operation we found that the average time from the end of surgery to the first request for an analgesic was 3.9 h, 22.7 h and 43.7 h in the control, flurbiprofen and epidural group, respectively. Substantially it was longer in the flurbiprofen and epidural group than in the control group (P < 0.01 and < 0.001, respectively). Patients in the control group requested analgesics for a longer period of time after the initial request compared with patients in the other groups. Our results indicate that postoperative pain can be reduced when flurbiprofen is added to general anesthesia before surgery, although use of flurbiprofen was not as effective as the conventional combined epidural and general anesthesia used for treating pain after laparoscopic cholecystectomy.