Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is a drug that is used commonly for relief of mild to moderate pain.
It is found in many pain medicines that people take after having surgery. Narcotics are other
drugs also used for pain (examples of narcotics are morphine and related pain medications).
Medical science knows for a fact that acetaminophen works well when taken with narcotics for
moderate to severe pain. Recently, acetaminophen has become available in an intravenous (IV)
form called Ofirmev®. The IV form means that acetaminophen can be given into a vein. The
benefits of getting medicine from an IV include:
- making the medicine work quickly
- less medicine having to pass through the liver to be changed into a form that your body
can process The investigators know that acetaminophen is helpful for pain relief at the
time of surgery and after surgery. Acetaminophen is a very popular drug in outpatient
surgery for pain control when patients go home. The patient's surgeon uses it to control
pain after surgery at home in the form of Lortab or Percocet (Lortab and Percocet also
have a narcotic medicine that mixes with acetaminophen). Also, currently at Surgicare,
some anesthesiologists give intravenous acetaminophen while the patient is waiting to go
to surgery. The investigators currently do not give any patient acetaminophen by mouth
BEFORE surgery. However, since the addition of the IV form to the drug market, there has
been interest to see if the oral form is just as good or better in reducing pain after
surgery. This is why we are asking patients to join our study. The goal of this study is
to find out if the oral form (by mouth) or the IV form (given into a vein) of
acetaminophen controls pain after surgery better.