Efficacy of postoperative pain management using patient-controlled wound infusion method after laparotomy in children: Three cases

Abstract

Background: For many years the impact of pain on children has been underestimated. Nowadays it is known to cause a wide spectrum of negative consequences. Therefore, this article aimed to report the effectiveness and success of the patient-controlled wound infiltration (PCWI) – one of the most recent postoperative pain management approaches. Methods: We carried out three cases of the PCWI technique for patients aged nine-to-ten years in the Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Kaunas Clinics. During surgery, the leading surgeon placed a multi-holed catheter preperitoneally, which was then connected to patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) device containing a pump with the analgesic solution filled beforehand. After the surgery, the patients evaluated their pain scores using a visual analogical scale every 3 h up until the removal of the catheter. Results: The average pain score of all three patients did not exceed more than 3.5 points with an overall pain score tendency to decrease over time when PCWI was applied. Moreover, no analgesia nor catheter-related complications were observed. Conclusion: PCWI showed to be a good pain-relieving, easily used, and applied method with no incidence of complications and no adverse effects of medications when applied for no longer than 48 hours.

Keywords

• Postoperative pain
• Patient-controlled analgesia
• Wound infusion
• Children
• Case report