We evaluated the optimal preemptive dose of gabapentin for postoperative pain relief after single-level lumbar diskectomy and its effect on fentanyl consumption during the initial 24 hours in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study in 100 patients with American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status I and II. Patients were divided into five groups to receive placebo or gabapentin 300, 600, 900, or 1200 mg 2 hours before surgery. After surgery, patients were transferred to the postanesthesia care unit (PACU). A blinded anesthesiologist recorded the pain scores at time points of 6, 12, 18, and 24 hours in the PACU on a Visual Analog Scale (VAS; 0-10 cm) at rest. Patients received patient-controlled analgesia (fentanyl 1.0 mug/kg on each demand with lockout interval of 10 minutes); total fentanyl consumption during initial 24 hours was recorded. Data were entered into the statistical software package SPSS 9.0 for analysis (one-way analysis of variance and Student-Newman-Keuls test). Patients who received gabapentin 300 mg had significantly lower VAS score at all time points. They consumed less fentanyl (patients who received placebo processed 1217.5 +/- 182.0 versus 987.5 +/- 129.6 mug; P < 0.05). Patients who received gabapentin 600, 900, and 1200 mg had lower VAS scores at all time points than patients who received gabapentin 300 mg (P < 0.05). Increasing the dose of gabapentin from 600 to 1200 mg did not decrease the VAS score, nor did the increasing dose of gabapentin significantly decrease fentanyl consumption (702.5, 635, and 626.5 microg). Thus, gabapentin 600 mg is the optimal dose for postoperative pain relief following lumbar diskectomy.

No abstract

We evaluated the effects of gabapentin and carbamazepine for pain relief in 36 Guillain-Barré syndrome patients. Patients were randomly assigned to receive gabapentin 300 mg, carbamazepine 100 mg, or matching placebo 3 times a day for 7 days. Fentanyl 2 microg/kg was used as a supplementary analgesic on patient demand. The pain score was recorded by using a numeric pain rating scale of 0-10, and sedation was recorded with a Ramsay sedation scale of 1-6 before medications were given and then at 6-h intervals throughout the study period. Total daily fentanyl consumption was recorded each day for each patient. The results of the study demonstrated that patients in the gabapentin group had significantly lower (P < 0.05) median numeric pain rating scale scores (3.5, 2.5, 2.0, 2.0, 2.0, 2.0, and 2.0) compared with patients in the placebo group (6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, and 6.0) and the carbamazepine group (6.0, 6.0, 5.0, 4.0, 4.0, 3.5, and 3.0). There was no significant difference in fentanyl consumption between the gabapentin and carbamazepine groups on Day 1 (340.1 +/- 34.3 microg and 347.5 +/- 38.0 microg, respectively), but consumption was significantly less in these 2 groups compared with the placebo group (590.4 +/- 35.0 microg) (P < 0.05). For the rest of the study period, there was a significant difference in fentanyl consumption among all treatment groups, and it was minimal in the gabapentin group (P < 0.05). We conclude that gabapentin is more effective than carbamazepine for decreasing pain and fentanyl consumption.