Comparative Assessment of Clonidine and Tramadol on Post-Spinal Anaesthesia Shivering among Patients with Lower Abdominal and Lower Limb Surgeries: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Spinal anaesthesia is commonly used as asafe anaesthetic technique for both elective and emergencyoperations. Shivering is known to be a frequent complicationreported in 40 to 70% of the patients undergoing surgery inregional anaesthesia. Hence, the aim of the present studywas to compare the efficacy of clonidine, and α2-agonistwith that of tramadol, a non-opioid analgesic for control ofshivering after spinal anaesthesia in patients undergoing lowerabdominal and lower limb surgeries.Material and methods: The present study was a randomizedcontrolled trial which was conducted among 60 patients agedbetween 18 to 70 years, who were scheduled for abdominal andlower limb surgeries and who developed shivering followingspinal anaesthesia. These 60 patients of ASA grade I and IIwhich were selected randomly after taking informed andwritten consent from their relatives. Once patient developedshivering, they were randomly allocated into two groupsnamed as Group C and Group T.Results: Patients who developed shivering grade 3 or 4 wereincluded in study. There was no significant difference betweenboth the groups regarding shivering grade. Out of 30 patientsin Group C, shivering subsided in 29(96.7%) patients. Whilein group T, shivering subsided in 26(86.7%) patients out of30. There was significant difference in both groups for controlof shivering (p= 0.0001) which proved that the rate of successafter clonidine was more than that of tramadol.Conclusion: Both clonidine (75 μg) and tramadol (0.5 mg/kg) can effectively treat patients with post-spinal anaesthesiashivering, but tramadol took longer time for completecessation of shivering than clonidine.