Pain Relief After Colorectal Surgery: Spinal Combined With Painbuster® vs Painbuster® Alone.
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2016-02-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Limiting surgical stress and managing postoperative pain are well understood to influence
recovery and outcome from major surgery for colorectal cancer and both are fundamental
aspects of enhanced recovery protocols.
Traditional approaches for dealing with these problems such as epidural or patient controlled
intravenous opioid analgesia are associated with problems that may be detrimental to
postoperative recovery and surgical outcome. As a result there is evidence in the literature
of increasing interest in alternative techniques such as intrathecal anaesthesia or
continuous wound infusion of local anaesthetic, however nobody has examined the effect of
combining the techniques or their impact on the surgical stress response.
We intend to compare patients undergoing major resections for colorectal cancer receiving
intrathecal anaesthesia in combination with a wound infusion of local anaesthetic with those
receiving a continuous wound infusion alone. We will examine the surgical stress response and
postoperative pain control in addition to objective measures of postoperative recovery.
We suggest that our approach will attenuate the surgical stress response and provide optimal
pain control that will ultimately translate in improved recovery and outcome following
surgery for colorectal cancer.