Regional vs Intravenous Lidocaine in Determining functional outcome after Lung Surgery (RIDDLE)

None listed

Substantial persistent pain after major lung surgery remains a significant problem despite new methods of pain control with up to one third of these patients still experiencing pain severe enough to affect their daily living months after lung surgeries. In addition to its effect on the essential daily tasks of living, long term pain is also known to cause mental health problems and lead to long-term opioid dependency further affecting the quality of life of patients and incurring extra cost to the healthcare system. Optimization of the acute pain control immediately after surgery is the single most important factor affecting the development of long-term pain. One of the more recently developed techniques of pain control is a technique called regional anaesthesia whereby local anaesthetic is injected next to the nerves supplying that area of the body with the surgical incision, thereby effectively ‘numbing’ them to reduce the pain felt by the patients. An alternative pain relief technique involves giving a small dose of local anaesthetic, such as lidocaine, directly into the veins of the patient. This method can offer a much more predictable pain relief than a regional anaesthetic technique because it does not require the specialized technical skills to perform and hence it may have a great potential for general use to reduce pain effectively. Nonetheless, administering local anaesthetic agent, such as lidocaine, directly into the blood can still have some rare side effect including drowsiness and changes in heart rhythm and blood pressure. In this study, we aim to compare these two pain relief methods, not only to assess whether one is better than the other in relieving pain, but also whether one is better to allow the patients to recover from surgery.

No related papers found yet.