Southern medical journal
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Southern medical journal · Dec 1991
Comparative Study Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical TrialAnalgesia after thoracotomy in children: a comparison of interpleural, epidural, and intravenous analgesia.
The cohort for this study included 39 patients, between the ages of 8 and 20 years, who had had thoracotomy. Postoperative analgesia was provided by one of three techniques: intravenous narcotics (20 patients), thoracic epidural catheter (10 patients), or interpleural analgesia (IPA) (nine patients). Both IPA and epidural analgesia were administered according to a specific protocol. ⋯ Four of 10 patients in the epidural group and two of nine in the IPA group required no interventions during the initial 72-hour postoperative course. In the epidural analgesia group, there were 19 days (of a total of 30 days) during which patients required no interventions. This percentage was significantly greater (P less than .05) than that of the IPA group, in which there were 9 days (of a total of 27 days), during which no interventions were required.