• Nirmala Jonnavithula, Harsh Khandelia, Padmaja Durga, and Gopinath Ramachandran.
• Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.
• Indian J Anaesth. 2015 Jan 1; 59 (1): 15-20.

Background And AimsModified Radical Mastectomy (MRM) is the commonly used surgical procedure for operable breast cancer, which involves extensive tissue dissection. Therefore, wound instillation with local anaesthetic may provide better postoperative analgesia than infiltration along the line of incision. We hypothesised that instillation of bupivacaine through chest and axillary drains into the wound may provide postoperative analgesia.MethodsIn this prospective randomised controlled study 60 patients aged 45-60 years were divided into three groups. All patients were administered general anaesthesia. At the end of the surgical procedure, axillary and chest wall drains were placed before closure. Group C was the control with no instillation; Group S received 40 ml normal saline, 20 ml through each drain; and Group B received 40 ml of 0.25% bupivacaine and the drains were clamped for 10 min. After extubation, pain score for both static and dynamic pain was evaluated using visual analog scale and then 4(th) hourly till 24 h. Rescue analgesia was injection tramadol, if the pain score exceeds 4. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 13.ResultsThere was a significant difference in the cumulative analgesic requirement and the number of analgesic demands between the groups (P: 0.000). The mean duration of analgesia in the bupivacaine group was 14.6 h, 10.3 in the saline group and 4.3 h in the control group.ConclusionWound instillation with local anaesthetics is a simple and effective means of providing good analgesia without any major side-effects.

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