Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Preoperative gabapentin for acute post-thoracotomy analgesia: a randomized, double-blinded, active placebo-controlled study.
The role of preoperative gabapentin in postoperative pain management is not clear, particularly in patients receiving regional blockade. Patients undergoing thoracotomy benefit from epidural analgesia but still may experience significant postoperative pain. We examined the effect of preoperative gabapentin in thoracotomy patients. ⋯ A single preoperative oral dose of gabapentin (600 mg) did not reduce pain scores or opioid consumption following elective thoracotomy, and did not confer any analgesic benefit in the setting of effective multimodal analgesia that included thoracic epidural infusion.