The Statistical Analyses Of The Study “Sufentanil Sublingual Tablet System (SSTS) For The Management Of Postoperative Pain After Major Abdominal And Gynecological Surgery Within An ERAS Protocol: An Observational Study” [Response To Letter]

Abstract

Stefano Turi, Francesco Deni, Gaetano Lombardi, Marilena Marmiere, Francesco Giuseppe Nisi, Luigi Beretta Dipartimento di Anestesia, Ospedale San Raffaele, Milano, ItalyCorrespondence: Stefano TuriDepartment of Anesthesiology, Vita-Salute, University, San Raffaele Hospital, Via Olgettina 60, Milan 20132, ItalyTel + 39 02 2 643 2656Email [email protected]   We thank Wang and Miao1 for their interest in our recent publication2 and the appreciation of our work. We agree with them on the need of using repeated-measures analysis to evaluate pain intensity at different timepoints. We acknowledge that, for the sake of brevity, our manuscript did not properly clarify the statistical methods used for the analysis and we take this opportunity to better explain them. We performed a repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare pain intensity on different time points. The analysis resulted statistically significant (p<0.01). Afterwards, we performed multiple comparisons using the error deriving from the ANOVA for repeated measures, which turned out statistically significant (p<0.01). In addition, we used the paired t-test to compare pain intensity on day 0 (baseline) and day 3, as indicated in the recent publication (median NRS 6 to 0, p<0.01).2   View the original paper by Turi at al and colleagues This is in response to the Letter to the Editor