Oral analgesia in the treatment of post-cesarean pain

Objective: Cesarean section is one of the most common operations. The new t echnologies of postoperative pain treatment such as patient-controlled anal gesia, are expensive and may limit women caring for their newborns shortly after delivery. The present study assessed patient satisfaction with oral a nalgesia following cesarean section. Study: design: An open prospective stu dy was conducted on all women who had a cesarean section with epidural anal gesia, during two consecutive periods of 3 months each. In the first group of 109 women, an oral solution of I g dipyrone was allowed every 4 h, upon patient request. Patients requesting additional analgesia were administered a tablet of 30 mg immediate-release morphine sulfate. Tn the second group of 90 women, the same protocol was used; however, oral morphine was the dru g of choice and dipyrone was used for rescue analgesia. Pain intensity and satisfaction were self-evaluated by patients using a visual analog scale. R esults: The results of each study period were independently evaluated. The demographic and obstetrical variables were similar in both groups. The dura tion of analgesic effect of dipyrone was 6.5 h and the satisfaction score w as 90. The duration of analgesic effect of oral morphine was 5.05 h and the satisfaction score was 83.7. Overall, patients in both groups requested on ly 25% of the permissible dosage of analgesia. Conclusions: Oral analgesia following cesarean section provides satisfactory pain relief, is easily adm inistered, and is a substantially less costly alternative to the new pain t reatment technologies currently in use. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland L td. All rights reserved.