Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Perioperative analgesia with parecoxib sodium improves postoperative pain and immune function in patients undergoing hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma.
Acute postoperative pain can result in immune dysfunction, which can be partly mitigated by efficient pain management. Opioids that have been widely applied to analgesia have been shown to suppress immune function, which has a negative impact on the treatment of patients with cancer. This study investigated the effects of perioperative fentanyl analgesia alone or in combination with parecoxib sodium on postoperative pain, immune function, and prognosis in patients undergoing hepatectomy of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). ⋯ The present study indicated that perioperative analgesia of parecoxib sodium combined with patient-controlled analgesic fentanyl resulted in better preserved immune function with enhancement of the analgesic efficacy to fentanyl alone of HCC patients undergoing hepatectomy and helped postpone postoperative tumour recurrence.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Unconditional and conditional monetary incentives to increase response to mailed questionnaires: A randomized controlled study within a trial (SWAT).
High response rates to research questionnaires can help to ensure results are more representative of the population studied and provide increased statistical power, on which the study may have been predicated. Improving speed and quality of response can reduce costs. ⋯ Unconditional monetary incentives can produce a transitory greater likelihood of mailed questionnaire response in a clinical trial participant group, consistent with the direction of effect in other settings. However, this could have been a chance finding. The use of multiple strategies to promote response may have created a ceiling effect. This strategy has potential to reduce administrative and postage costs, weighed against the cost of incentives used, but could risk compromising the completeness of data.