ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The pain after nephrectomy, just as any other surgery, is one of the problems that surgeons confront. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relieving effect of acupuncture on the pain experienced after nephrectomy. METHODS: This was a clinical trial that was performed on 30 patients with mean age of 40.8 ± 12.54 who were candidates for nephrectomy. After matching for gender and age, the patients were divided into either acupuncture or control group. In acupuncture group, four points were stimulated for 30 minutes, and in control group, other points were stimulated ineffectively for 30 min. Then, the pain experienced in the first six hours after the surgery was registered by a blind observer based on visual analog scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and the t-test. RESULTS: Our results showed that the severity of pain in the acupuncture group was significantly lower than that in the control group. Also, there were six patients who required opioids in the acupuncture group, but there were 12 such patients in the control group. The mean opiate used in the control group was significantly greater than the mean for the acupuncture group. CONCLUSIONS: Acupuncture can reduce the severity of pain and the demand for opioids in patients who have undergone nephrectomy.
Subject(s)
Acupuncture Therapy , Analgesics, Opioid/therapeutic use , Kidney/surgery , Nephrectomy/adverse effects , Pain, Postoperative/therapy , Adult , Double-Blind Method , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Pain Measurement , Pain, Postoperative/etiologyABSTRACT
This study was undertaken to assess the accuracy of computerized tomographic angiography (CTA) for the evaluation of renal vascular anatomy for pre-operative donor assessment in living kidney transplantation and to compare it with conventional angiography. CTA of 70 living donor kidney donors were analyzed by two blinded observers and compared with the intraoperative findings. Similarly, findings of formal angiography of 30 living donor kidney donors were compared with the intraoperative observations. In the CTA group, there were two patients each with two main renal veins discovered during surgery that had not been recorded on CTA. In the second group, there was one patient with unrevealed two main renal veins before surgery. In both groups, accessory renal arteries were diagnosed. Overall, the accuracy for renal main artery anatomy was 100% for both CTA and conventional angiography. Accuracy for renal main vein anatomy was 97.1% and 96.6% for CTA and conventional angiography, respectively. Hence, these two modalities had comparable results for assessment of main renal vasculature anatomy.
