Plastic and reconstructive surgery
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Plast. Reconstr. Surg. · Mar 2008
Randomized Controlled TrialA prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled trial of continuous local anesthetic infusion in cosmetic breast augmentation.
Narcotic pain medications are a significant component of most postoperative pain control regimens. Although they are usually effective, they produce several untoward side effects and sometimes provide inadequate analgesia. The continuous infusion of local anesthetic agents (via pain pump) has been used to supplement narcotic analgesics after various surgical procedures. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the pain pump after cosmetic breast augmentation. ⋯ The pain pump appears to provide breast augmentation patients marginal improvement in pain control, although this advantage did not reach statistical significance in this study. The benefit, if real, also appears to wane over the first postoperative week.