• Tomás B Corcoran, Catherine Martin, Edmond O'Loughlin, Kwok Ho, Matthew Chan, Andrew Forbes, Kate Leslie, and Paul Myles.
• Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; Discipline of Emergency Medicine, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; Central Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. Electronic address: tomas.corcoran@health.wa.gov.au.
• Br J Anaesth. 2023 Jul 1; 131 (1): 9310393-103.

BackgroundDexamethasone is commonly administered intraoperatively to prevent postoperative nausea and vomiting and is believed to have analgesic properties. It is unknown whether it has an impact on chronic wound pain.MethodsIn this prespecified embedded superiority substudy of the randomised PADDI trial, patients undergoing non-urgent noncardiac surgery received dexamethasone 8 mg or placebo intravenously after induction of anaesthesia, and were followed up for 6 months postoperatively. The primary outcome was the incidence of pain in the surgical wound at 6 months. Secondary outcomes included acute postoperative pain and correlates of chronic postsurgical pain.ResultsWe included 8478 participants in the modified intention-to-treat population (4258 in the dexamethasone group and 4220 in the matched placebo group). The primary outcome occurred in 491 subjects (11.5%) in the dexamethasone arm and 404 (9.6%) subjects in the placebo arm (relative risk 1.2, 95% confidence interval 1.06-1.41, P=0.003). Maximum pain scores at rest and on movement in the first 3 postoperative days were lower in the dexamethasone group compared with the control group {median 5 (inter-quartile range [IQR] 3.0-8.0) vs 6 (IQR 3.0-8.0) and median 7 (IQR 5.0-9.0) vs 8 (IQR 6.0-9.0), P<0.001 for both}. Severity of postoperative pain was not predictive of chronic postsurgical pain. The severity of chronic postsurgical pain and the frequency of neuropathic features did not differ between treatment groups.ConclusionAdministration of dexamethasone 8 mg i.v. was associated with an increase in the risk of pain in the surgical wound 6 months after surgery.Clinical Trial RegistrationACTRN12614001226695.Crown Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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