NSAIDs Preferred Over Opioid as Post-Operative Analgesic: A Prospective, Observational Prescribing Pattern Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Eastern India

ABSTRACT

Pain is an unpleasant sensation as a consequence of injury, disease along with emotional disorder occurring in varying degrees of severity. Poor control of pain is complete unethical, clinically unsound and economically disastrous. Effective pain control in postoperative period is one of the essential components of post-operative care for those patients who have undergone surgery. Inadequate and inappropriate pain control results in significant increase in post-operative morbidity or mortality. Methods: An prospective, observational analytical study by collection of data without intervention was done. Ethical committee’s approval was duly taken. Data were collected in the post- operative ward of department of general surgery from the bed side tickets of the patients. Results: In our current study we observed out of 515 postoperative patients 49.5% (255) were male and 50.5 % (260) were female, on the other hand more Hindu(85.4%) than Muslim(14.6%). On the day of surgery Monotherapy was prescribed for 440(67%) patients and 33% received both combination analgesic therapies. A total of 33% patients who received dual analgesic therapy immediate post-operative period most commonly used combination was Tramadol+Diclofenac (130/170), followed by Tramadol+ Paracetamol (40/170). In the following post-operative days increase in use of Diclofenac+Paracetamol was noted. No Triple drug therapy observed in this study. Conclusion: The results of current study shows that diclofenac was the most commonly prescribed analgesic. It is due to high efficacy of diclofenac in post operative pain control with better safty profile; i.e. lesser side effects compared to other analgesic.