Efficacy and safety of an acute pain service among 10,760 postoperative patients

Introduction. Post-operative pain con-trol improves surgical outcome and many hospitals created multidisciplinary teams, called “Acute Pain Services” (APS). We col-lected APS data on 10,760 adult patients over a five year period, including compli-cations, side effects and patient satisfac-tion.Methods. Data on patients managed by APS in a high surgical-volume university hospital over a 5-year period were col-lected and analyzed. Data included demo-graphic characteristics, primary analgesic modality, adjuvant analgesic treatment, type of surgical procedure, Visual Ana-logue Scale, and analgesia-related side-effects and complications.Results. Patient controlled analgesia with morphine was used in 4,992 surgical pa-tients while epidural analgesia was used in 3,687 surgical patients and 1,670 pregnant women for delivery analgesia. A total of 411 patients received other forms of analgesia. No epidural haematoma was observed. A single case of respiratory depression oc-curred in an elderly patient using the pa-tient controlled analgesia system. Acetami-nophen was the most frequently adjuvant drug prescribed. Postoperative nausea and vomiting was the most frequent analgesia-related side effect. Visual Analogue Scale at rest and on movement was low on day one (0.84±1.15 and 2.05±1.67) and decreased thereafter with epidural analgesia associ-ated with better pain control following hip and liver surgery, and with less postop-erative nausea and vomiting (5.0%) when compared to morphine patient controlled analgesia (7.2%).Conclusions. An APS, with daily postop-erative visits, permits adequate post-oper-ative pain control without serious adverse events. Epidural analgesia was associated with less postoperative nausea and vom-iting and had at least similar pain control than morphine patient controlled analge-sia.