British journal of anaesthesia
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Postoperative analgesia after circumcision in children.
The analgesic effects of systemically administered diamorphine, caudal analgesia with 0.5% bupivacaine plain and caudal analgesia with 0.5% bupivacaine plain to which morphine sulphate had been added were studied in boys undergoing circumcision. Postoperative analgesia was assessed using a linear analogue scale. The time interval between operation and subsequent analgesic administration and the number of analgesic doses in 24 h were compared. ⋯ The only detectable difference between the groups was a more rapid, but transient, recovery in the group receiving plain bupivacaine only. The frequency of vomiting was high in all groups. Caudal analgesia, with or without the addition of morphine, did not confer any advantage over injected diamorphine, and did not justify the extra time, risk and expense required to carry it out.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Acute i.v. Methadone Kinetics in Man: relationship to chronic studies.
Twenty-six patients were given methadone 10 mg i.v. to obtain acute human kinetics. Plasma methadone concentrations from separate 3- and 6-h studies were measured by radioimmunoassay. Kinetic parameters derived from triexponential NONLIN analysis showed that T1/2 alpha and T1/2 beta were 2 and 30 min respectively; no reliable estimate for T1/2 gamma could be obtained. ⋯ The difficulties in determining accurate terminal half-life and clearance values from short duration studies are discussed; these difficulties are accentuated by the long terminal half-life of methadone. Appropriate estimates of clearance may be derived from an acute short duration study provided that the average of triexponential fits to individual patients data is used, even when data extend from only 3h. As might be anticipated, no analysis produced appropriate terminal half-life values for this drug.