British journal of anaesthesia
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Editorial Randomized Controlled Trial
Critical appraisal of randomised trials assessing regional analgesic interventions for knee arthroplasty: implications for postoperative pain guidelines development.
Guidelines are increasingly being used for clinical decision-making. Such guidelines are usually based on meta-analyses, which are generally derived from RCTs. ⋯ Analyses of RCTs assessing analgesic efficacy of advanced regional analgesic techniques in knee arthroplasty show that the majority of trials do not include a package of basic analgesics such as paracetamol, NSAIDs or cyclooxygenase-2 specific inhibitors, dexamethasone, and local infiltration analgesia in the comparator group. Consequently, the current approach to analyse meta-analyses of pain interventions is not optimal, and may lead to inadequate or inappropriate conclusions and clinical guidance.