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Abstract

Introduction

Pain control remains one of the major challenges in management of burn patients. Pain associated with procedural and post-procedural burn care such as excision and grafting, postoperative dressing changes, and postoperative physical therapies often requires patients to be on intravenous and oral analgesics leading to potential long-term dependence after hospital discharge. Peripheral nerve blocks (PNB) use for perioperative pain management in burn patients may present an alternative pain management modality to help decrease analgesic consumption and shorten length of stay following procedural care. Our hypothesis was tested by evaluating the outcomes from implementation of PNB with ultrasound guided catheter placement for burn procedural care in patients with ≤ 10% total burn surface area (TBSA) requiring excision and grafting.

Methods

After IRB approval, we retrospectively collected demographics, medical history, pain intensity (rated as “No Pain” [NRS=0], “Minor Pain” [NRS 1 to 3], “Moderate Pain” [NRS 4 to 6], “Severe Pain” [NRS 7 to 10]), postoperative analgesic consumption and time to hospital discharge of patients who underwent autografting procedures for burn injuries ≤ 10% TBSA from October 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019 (the start of our implementation of PNB for procedural burn care). Data was analyzed using chi square/Fisher exact test for categorical variables and t-test for continuous variables.

Results

Our preliminary data included 20 patients (10 patients had PNB) with average age of 53 years, 60% males and average TBSA of 4.8%. Patients in both PNB and non-PNB groups had unremarkable medical histories and scald and flame as mechanism of burns. There was no significant difference in TBSA (5.3% TBSA in PNB and 4.8% TBSA in non-PNB). Pain intensity before autografting procedure for both groups were reported as moderate to severe and managed with fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, along with ibuprofen and acetaminophen. There was no significant difference in postoperative pain intensity and opioid consumptions; however, postoperative acetaminophen consumption was less in PNB group compared to non-PNB group (2762±3646 mg vs 3932±7511 mg, respectively), although not statistically significant. There was no significant difference between time from surgery to first physical therapy session; however, time to hospital discharge was shorter in PNB group compared to non-PNB group (5.7±1 days vs 10.5±9 days, respectively), although not statistically significant.

Conclusions

This evaluation shows a trend in reduction of inpatient postoperative analgesic consumption as well as time to hospital discharge with the use of PNB, although a bigger sample size is needed for further assessment.

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This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://dbpia.nl.go.kr/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
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Pain and Pruritis > R-132 Pain and Pruritis
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