Studies suggests that many patients suffer moderate to severe pain
after abdominal surgery. Most surgeons would use opiates (morphine) as
the main pain medication after surgery. As some of you are aware,
morphine (and other opiates) cause your bowel to be inactive and some
experience severe nausea and vomiting. At University Tennessee - West
Clinic, we initiated a program to assess and reduce surgical pain.
Instead of using morphine only, my team started our patients with IV acetominophen (Tylenol) and gabapentin BEFORE surgery. During surgery, we inject local anesthesia to numb the incision even after patients asleep under general anesthesia. After surgery, we give patients more acetominophen, gabapentin and ketorolac (intravenous form of drug similar to ibuprofen). With this regimen, most of my patients reported tremendous pain reduction compared to just morphine alone (data unpublished yet). Most of my patients experience minimal pain after abdominal surgery with this multimodalities pain control method. Instead of staying 3-5 days in the hospital after cancer surgery, most of my patients now go home the next day. Another good thing about using less morphine is they experience less nausea after surgery.
Please note that not all patients have relieved of their surgical pain completely. But most of them are relieved to the point that most of them can go home one day after surgery. When you go for surgery, consider asking your surgeon about multimodality pain control. In the reference below, I included our paper that was published on how to do this.
Reference
Instead of using morphine only, my team started our patients with IV acetominophen (Tylenol) and gabapentin BEFORE surgery. During surgery, we inject local anesthesia to numb the incision even after patients asleep under general anesthesia. After surgery, we give patients more acetominophen, gabapentin and ketorolac (intravenous form of drug similar to ibuprofen). With this regimen, most of my patients reported tremendous pain reduction compared to just morphine alone (data unpublished yet). Most of my patients experience minimal pain after abdominal surgery with this multimodalities pain control method. Instead of staying 3-5 days in the hospital after cancer surgery, most of my patients now go home the next day. Another good thing about using less morphine is they experience less nausea after surgery.
Please note that not all patients have relieved of their surgical pain completely. But most of them are relieved to the point that most of them can go home one day after surgery. When you go for surgery, consider asking your surgeon about multimodality pain control. In the reference below, I included our paper that was published on how to do this.
Reference
Azari L, Santoso
JT, Osborne SE. Optimal Pain
Management in Total Abdominal Hysterectomy. Obstet Gyn Survey. 2013, 68 (3): 215–227
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