Ondansetron and Aprepitant Vs Ondansetron alone in prevention of postoperative nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing laparoscopic surgeries: A comparative study

Recent studies have shown that aprepitant, a substance – P/ Nk 1 receptor antagonist is effective in postoperative vomiting. The present study was designed to find out whether addition of aprepitant to ondansetron would be more effective than ondansetron alone in prevention of post operative nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing laparoscopic surgeries. After obtaining informed consent, 50 patients with ASA grade I and II between 25 55 years of age undergoing laparoscopic surgery under general anaesthesia were randomly divided into two groups of 25 patients each. GroupI received 4 mg of ondansetron i.v and Group II received the 4mg of ondansetron i.v with 40mg oral of aprepitant before induction. Incidence and severity of nausea, vomiting was recorded at 2, 6, 24, 48 hours postoperatively by using a standard verbal response scale ranging from 0 to 3 (0 no nausea / vomiting; 1 mild nausea / vomiting; 2 moderate nausea / vomiting; 3 severe nausea / vomiting. The data was subjected to statistical analysis by using SPSS 16.0 version software. Chi square test was employed to analyse the data and P < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. The incidence of post-operative nausea and vomiting was more in group I when compare to group II at 2, 6, 24 and 48 h after surgery. The severity of post operative nausea and vomiting in group I is higher when compare to group II. The addition of aprepitant to ondansetron offered an added advantage over the usage of ondansetron alone as a single drug.