• Diana Moyao-García, Juan C Hernández-Palacios, Juan C Ramírez-Mora, and Alejandro A Nava-Ocampo.
• Department of Anesthesia, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, México, DF México. dianitamg@yahoo.com
• Acta Biomed. 2009 Aug 1;80(2):124-30.

AbstractNalbuphine and tramadol are potent analgesic drugs. Our aim was to preliminarily assess and compare the efficacy and safety of nalbuphine and tramadol for postoperative analgesia in children. In a double-blind design, 24 ASA 1-3 children aged 1 to 10 years undergoing a scheduled surgical procedure were randomly allocated to receive either an intravenous bolus dose of nalbuphine 100 microg/kg immediately before the end of surgery followed by an infusion of 0.2 microg/kg/min for 72 hrs., or an intravenous bolus dose of tramadol 1000 microg/kg followed by an infusion of 2.0 microg/kg/min for 72 hrs. Postoperative pain control and drug-related adverse events were recorded. Three children who received nalbuphine required an extra bolus dose within the 12 hrs. of post-surgery versus one child in the tramadol group. A similar number of patients in both groups required an increment in the infusion rate within the 72 post-surgery hours. Sedation was observed in 2 children in the nalbuphine group and in 1 child in the tramadol group. Four children presented vomiting with tramadol and two with nalbuphine. Cardiovascular parameters remained within the normal ranges in both groups. In conclusion, the bolus/infusion regimen of tramadol evaluated in this study appears to have better postoperative analgesic efficacy than the bolus/infusion regimen of nalbuphine. These preliminary results require further confirmation by studies with a sample size enough to clearly identify differences in their efficacy as well as in the rate of adverse events secondary to the administration of each of them.

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