Postoperative Pain Among Patients After Day-Case Surgery

Abstract

Postoperative pain occurs at a high incidence after day-case surgery, with many patients reporting moderate to severe pain. A cross-sectional design was used in this study to estimate the prevalence of postoperative pain in the early postoperative period after day-case surgery and to determine whether there is a relationship between demographic and clinical variables. A convenient sample of 300 patients, aged between 18 and 80 years, was selected from all postoperative patients after day-case surgery over a period of 6 months. At the first 2 hr after surgery, about 70% of patients had either no pain or mild pain at rest and about 30% of patients had moderate to severe pain. About one third of these patients (103; 35.8%) reported mild pain, and about 43% of patients had moderate to severe pain on movement in the first 2 hr after surgery. Furthermore, 25.3% and 41.3% of the patients reported moderate to severe pain during the first 24 hr after hospital discharge at rest and on movement, respectively. Female patients had significantly higher pain scores than male patients (p < .001). Significant decrease in pain scores was reported in the first 2 hr after surgery (mean = 2.2, SD = 2) and within the first 24 hr after discharge (mean = 1.8, SD = 2.2, t(288) = 4.3, p =. 005) at rest. The prevalence of pain among postoperative patients after day-care surgery in Jordan is high. Young adult and female patients have higher pain scores after day-case surgery.

Prevalence of postoperative pain after hospital discharge: systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Table 1 displays the characteristics of the included studies, including study size, participant age range, surgery type, ambulatory vs inpatient setting, postoperative time points at which pain was assessed, and pain prevalence estimates. The 27 studies enrolled a total of 22,108 participants from: studies involving mixtures of different surgical procedures (n = 20 studies), 2 – 4 , 6 , 7 , 11 , 16 – 18 , 22 , 26 , 28 , 30 – 32 , 35 , 37 , 40 , 45 , 46 total knee replacement (n = 2 studies), 8 , 9 sternotomy (n = 1 study), 44 laparoscopic surgery (n = 1 study), 48 cataract surgery (n = 1 study), 39 orthopedic surgery (n = 1 study), 43 and routine dentoalveolar surgery (n = 1 study). 25 The 27 studies included ambulatory surgeries (n = 19), 3 , 4 , 7 , 11 , 16 , 17 , 22 , 25 , 26 , 28 , 30 – 32 , 35 , 37 , 39 , 40 , 46 , 48 inpatient surgeries (n = 1), 6 mixtures of both inpatient and ambulatory surgeries (n = 4), 2 , 18 , 43 , 45 or was not specified (n = 3).…”

“… 8 , 9 , 44 Only one study specified whether the pain being assessed was at rest or with movement. 16 …”

Adopting the day surgery default in the provision of lumbar discectomy and decompressive surgery

“…Uncontrolled pain is typically one of the main reasons for delayed discharge in day surgery (Mitchell 2004, Rae 2016. Similarly, moderate to severe pain is commonly reported following discharge after day surgery (Elaqoul et al 2017) and previous studies have estimated that more than half of patients experience this level of pain in the first 24 hours of being home (Townsend & Cox 2007).…”

Consistency of postoperative pain assessments between nurses and patients undergoing enhanced recovery after gynaecological surgery

“…The α value was set at 0.05, and power was set at 0.90. Based on our pretest research comparing patients' and nurses' pain scores, δ was 1.01 (and a change in one point in the NRS-based postoperative pain score indicates a clinically significant change (Elaqoul et al, 2017)) and σ was 1.91. We then looked up the appropriate sample size in the "twosample mean comparison t test-required sample size table," and we found that the sample size should be at least 58.…”