Prevalence of acute post-operative pain in patients in adult age-group undergoing inpatient abdominal surgery and correlation of intensity of pain and satisfaction with analgesic management: A cross-sectional single institute-based study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Considering the paucity of regional data, this study was designed to investigate the prevalence of post-operative pain and determine if there exists any correlation between the intensity of post-operative pain and patient's level of satisfaction with their pain management after inpatient abdominal surgery at an academic tertiary care government centre. METHODS Pain intensity was measured in 120 patients with numeric rating scale at the fifth post-operative hour, second and third post-operative day. A questionnaire was used to measure the level of satisfaction with nurse's and doctor's response to their pain and overall pain management. RESULTS The prevalence of post-operative pain was 84.17%, 92.5% and 96.66% at the fifth post-operative hour, second and third post-operative day, respectively. Less number of patients experienced severe intensity pain on the third post-operative day (P = 0.00046), whereas the number of patients experiencing mild pain increased (P < 0.000) compared to the fifth post-operative hour. The number of patients with complete analgesia decreased on the third post-operative day (P = 0.001 compared to fifth post-operative day). The Spearman correlation coefficient between pain score on the third post-operative day and level of satisfaction with nurse's response, doctor's response to pain and the overall pain management was - 0.0218 (P = 0.8107), 0.1307 (P = 0.1553) and 0.0743 (P = 0.4195), respectively. CONCLUSION There is a high prevalence of acute post-operative pain in patients undergoing inpatient abdominal surgery at our institute. There is a weak correlation between the intensity of pain and level of satisfaction with pain management.