Abstract: Objective:To investigate the clinical value of preventive analgesia in patients with radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer.
Methods:The clinical data of 161 patients undergoing radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer at the Xijing Hospital from July 2012 to June 2013 were prospectively analyzed. A singleblind, randomized, controlled study was performed in the eligibe patients who were randomly divided into the preventive analgesia group and the control group based on a random number table. All the patients received major gastrectomy+Billroth Ⅱ anastomy or total gastrectomy+esophagojejunastomy, and then they received vein combined anesthesia and tracheal intubation. In the preventive analgesia group, 10 mg dexamethasone and 200 mg parecoxib were administered by intravenous infusion before operation, 7-8 mL ropivacaine (0.5%) were injected at the incisional site and transversus abdominis infiltration at open and close surgery and celecoxib was taken orally for 3 days. In the control group, vein analgesia pump was used after operation. The visual analogue scale (VAS), proportion of patients with postoperative outoffbed activity time>8 hours, time of flatus, time of defecation and duration of hospital stay were recorded between the 2 groups. The measurement data with normal distribution were presented as ±s. The comparison between groups was evaluated with the t test and repeated measures ANOVA. The data with skew distrubution and ordinal data were analyzed by the analysis of variance, and the count data were analyzed using the chisquare test.
Results:All the 161 patients who were screened for eligibility were randomly divided into the preventive analgesia group (87 patients) and the control group (74 patients). The scores of the VAS 〖HJ*4〗at postoperative day 1, 2 and 3 were 2.8±0.6, 2.6±0.4 and 1.8±0.4 in the preventive analgesia group, and 5.3±0.5, 4.2±0.6 and 2.4±0.3 in the control group, with a significant difference between the 2 groups (F=4.25, P<0.05). The proportion of patients with postoperative first abmulation time>8 hours at postoperative day 1, 2 and 3 were 8, 17 and 20 in the preventive analgesia group, and 0, 3 and 11 in the control group, with a significant difference between the 2 groups (χ²=7.60, 10.26, 3.16, P<0.05). The time of flatus , time of defecation and duration of hospital stay were (51±24)hours, (61±24)hours and (5.5±3.0)days in the preventive analgesia group, compared with (71±23)hours, (83±30)hours and (6.3±2.1)days in the control group, showing a significant difference between the 2 groups (t=5.32, 5.04, 0.17, P<0.05). All the patients in the 2 groups normally survived after surgery without respiratory depression, incision infection and adverse drug reaction.
Conclusions:Preventive analgesia in the perioperative treatment of patients with radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer could relieve the postoperative pain of patients, improve the bowel function and enhance the recovery of patients. Registry　This study was registered with the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry with the registry number of ChiCTRTRC-11001440.