Opioid-Free Anesthesia for Pain Relief After Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

Jun-Ma Yu; Qing-Yu Tao; Yan He; Dong Liu; Jing-Yi Niu; Ye Zhang

doi:10.2147/JPR.S432601

Opioid-Free Anesthesia for Pain Relief After Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

J Pain Res. 2023 Oct 30:16:3625-3632. doi: 10.2147/JPR.S432601. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jun-Ma Yu^#^{1

2}, Qing-Yu Tao², Yan He², Dong Liu², Jing-Yi Niu², Ye Zhang^#¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Anesthesiology, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University (The First People's Hospital of Hefei), Hefei, Anhui, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: To compare the efficacies of opioid-free anesthesia (OFA) and opioid-based anesthesia (OBA) in laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC).

Patients and methods: A total of 150 patients who underwent 3-port LC procedures were randomly divided into an OFA group with esketamine, dexmedetomidine and lidocaine intravenous combined with local anesthetic incision infiltration or an OBA group with remifentanil combined with local anesthetic incision infiltration. The primary outcome was the consumption of rescue analgesics within 24 hrs after surgery. Secondary outcomes included time to LMA removal, time to orientation recovery, time to unassisted walking, sleep quality on the night of surgery, time to first flatus, hemodynamics during induction of general anesthesia, postoperative pain level on the visual analog scale (VAS), incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) and global satisfaction score (GSS) within 24 hrs after surgery.

Results: Both the consumption of rescue analgesics and the time to first flatus in the OFA group were significantly lower than those in the OBA group (P < 0.001 and P = 0.029, respectively). However, the time to LMA removal and the time to orientation recovery were significantly longer in the OFA group than in the OBA group (P < 0.001). In addition, the VAS scores at 2 hrs and 8 hrs after surgery and HR at laryngeal mask airway insertion in the OFA group were significantly lower than those in the OBA group (P = 0.002 and P = 0.001, and P =0.016, respectively).

Conclusion: OFA may be beneficial for patients undergoing LC in that it could decrease the dosage of postoperative analgesics and pain intensity and even shorten the time to first flatus after surgery.

Keywords: dexmedetomidine; esketamine; laparoscopic cholecystectomy; opioid-free anesthesia.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Applied Medicine Research Project Fund of Hefei Health Committee (grant number: 2019-ZC-2) and the Research Project of Anhui Health Committee (grant number: 145).