ABSTRACT
Various drugs are administered intra-articularly to provide postoperative analgesia after arthroscopic knee surgery. The purpose of this study was to assess the analgesic effects of intra-articular injection of a dexmedeto-midine following knee arthroscopy. Forty six patients schadualed for arthroscopic knee surgery under general anaesthesia, were randomly devided into two groups. Intervention group received 1microg/kg dexmedetomidine [D] and isotonic saline. Control group received 25ml isotonic saline [P]. Analgesic effects were evaluated by measuring pain intensity [VAS scores] and duration of analgesia. There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of age, sex and weight. The mean of post-operation pain severity in 1, 3, 6,12, and 24 h was significantly lower in the intervention group [D] in comparison w] to toe contio] group [P]. toe mean of toe tola] dose oftramado] consumption was significantly lower in the mterven-tion group in comparison with the control group [P<0.001]. Intra-articular injection of dexmedetomidine at the end of arthroscopic knee surgery, alleviates the patients' pain; reducing the postoperative need for narcotics as analgesics, and increase the first analgesic request after operation