Comparison of Bupivacaine Versus Bupivacaine-dexamethasone Infiltration for Postoperative Analgesia in Skin Graft Donor Sites

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2019-02-10

Summary

Background: Skin grafting; both partial and complete thickness is frequently used in reconstruction of traumatic soft tissue defects. It is of great value not only for functional and aesthetic purposes in the field of plastic surgery, but also for other surgical specialties.

Of all the problems in the early postoperative period, pain is considered the most important, ameliorating it can lead to significant reduction in postoperative morbidity and faster recovery of the skin donor site.

Objective: To evaluate use of dexamethasone as adjuvant for bupivacaine in subcutaneous local anesthesia infiltration for skin graft donor sites, on quality of pain relief and total dose of analgesic requirements in the early hours postoperatively.

Methods: 97 patients were randomly allocated to receive local bupivacaine infiltration (group LB), or dexamethasone plus bupivacaine (group LB + D) in skin donor site after skin harvesting. In addition to basic demographic data; patients were compared for Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), total dose of morphine or morphine equivalents, time to 1st breakthrough pain, and duration of surgery.

Keywords: Donor site. skin graft. Breakthrough pain. Rescue analgesia. Bupivacaine

• Phase: Phase 4

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Ain Shams University
• Treatments: BB 1101; Bupivacaine; Dexamethasone; Dexamethasone acetate; Lidocaine