A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of the Analgesic Efficacy of Intravenous Acetaminophen in Ambulatory Surgery

Purpose: We investigated whether intraoperative intravenous acetaminophen has the potential to reduce pain after ambulatory surgery and reduce time to discharge from the post anaesthesia care unit and hospital. Methods: We tested this hypothesis by conducting a prospective randomized, double-blind clinical trial in patients undergoing ambulatory surgery. A total of 145 patients were randomized to pre and postoperative placebo (50), intravenous (IV) operative and postoperative oral acetaminophen (49), and pre and postoperative oral acetaminophen (48). Results: The primary end point; visual analogue scale mean pain intensity over 24 hours after completion of surgery, was not significantly different between the 3 groups, control group 2.0 (1.6), mean (SD), (IV) acetaminophen group 2.1 (1.9) and oral acetaminophen group 2.1 (1.6); (p=0.93). Time to fitness for discharge from the postoperative care unit (p=0.77) and time to fitness for discharge from hospital (p=0.27) also did not vary significantly between the three groups. Conclusion: The addition of intraoperative IV acetaminophen to a standard analgesia regimen in patients undergoing ambulatory surgery did not significantly improve pain control or discharge times after surgery compared with pre and postoperative oral acetaminophen or placebo. *Corresponding author: Alex Konstantatos, Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine, Alfred Hospital, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Fax: 0390762813; E-mail: [email protected] Received January 10, 2012; Accepted February 09, 2012; Published February 15, 2012 Citation: Konstantatos A, Smith J, Angliss M (2012) A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of the Analgesic Efficacy of Intravenous Acetaminophen in Ambulatory Surgery. J Pain Relief 1:104. doi:10.4172/2167-0846.1000104 Copyright: © 2012 Konstantatos A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.