• Lian Cheng, Yuan Le, Hui Yang, and Xiangyu Zhou.
• Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Key Laboratory of Luzhou, Department of General Surgery (Thyroid Surgery), Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, 646000, China.
• Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2021 Jun 1; 278 (6): 1957-1964.

IntroductionThe effect of dexamethasone on postoperative pain after thyroid surgery remains controversial. We conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the influence of dexamethasone versus placebo on postoperative pain after thyroid surgery.MethodsWe search PubMed, EMbase, Web of science, EBSCO, and Cochrane library databases through May 2020 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the effect of dexamethasone versus placebo on postoperative pain after thyroid surgery. This meta-analysis is performed using the random-effect model.ResultsEight RCTs involving 734 patients are included in the meta-analysis. Overall, compared with control group for thyroid surgery, dexamethasone shows significantly reduced pain scores (SMD = - 0.82; 95% CI - 1.08 to - 0.56; P < 0.00001), number of required analgesics (OR = 0.18; 95% CI 0.11-0.31; P < 0.00001), analgesic consumption (SMD = - 0.38; 95% CI - 0.63 to - 0.13; P = 0.003), nausea and vomiting (OR = 0.38; 95% CI 0.17-0.86; P = 0.02), as well as rescue antiemetics (OR = 0.40; 95% CI 0.20-0.79; P = 0.008).ConclusionsPerioperative dexamethasone is effective to reduce the pain, nausea and vomiting after thyroid surgery.

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