• T I Anatol, P Pitt-Miller, and Y Holder.
• Unit of Paediatric Surgery, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, West Indies.
• Can J Anaesth. 1997 Oct 1;44(10):1053-9.

PurposeTo evaluate the relative effectiveness of three techniques of regional anaesthesia in the provision of postoperative analgesia in children.MethodsRandom assignment was made of 183 children scheduled for groin surgery to one of three groups. Bupivacaine 0.5% plain (2 mg.kg-1) was injected by the surgeon after skin incision. Group A received wound infiltration. Group B had regional nerve blockade. Group C had a combination of both methods. Postoperatively, pain was assessed using the CHEOPS behavioural scale at half hourly intervals until discharge home. Satisfactory pain control was arbitrarily defined as a CHEOPS score of < or = six. Potential differences among the groups were sought using graphical representation of mean pain scores, the frequencies of maximum pain scores, and the incidence of postoperative vomiting and oral analgesic consumption.ResultsFifteen patients had to be excluded from analysis. This left 61 patients in Group A, 55 in Group B, and 52 in Group C. There were no demographic differences among the groups. No differences were demonstrated among the groups either in CHEOPS pain scores at any observation point (P = > 0.8), or in the incidence of vomiting or need for postoperative analgesia. (P = 0.52 and P = 0.41 respectively). Overall, 80% of the observations made (1,135/1,425) met our definition of satisfactory pain control. A post hoc calculation of the power of the study confirmed sufficient power to detect a 5% difference among groups.ConclusionAll three methods achieved analgesia with 80% of the pain scores meeting our definition of satisfactory pain control. None of the techniques enjoyed any apparent advantage.

21 keywords...

hide…