European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background:
Postoperative pain after total knee replacement surgery is an unpleasant memory for the patients.
Different techniques have been tried to elevate the post-operative pain. A femoral nerve block
with local anaesthetics is considered to bethe gold standard for postoperative pain.But the painfree
period after the femoral nerve block lasts for a few hours only.Several adjuvants have been
triedwith local anaestheticsto prolong analgesics’ duration and avoid the adverse effects of
NSAIDsandopioid use.
Objective:
In this study, we have used dexamethasone as an adjuvant withropivacaine to prolong the
duration of analgesia effect, in a single dose of perineural femoral nerve block after total knee
arthroplasty.
Methods:
It was a prospective, randomized, controlled study, sixty patients were randomly assigned to one
of two groups:Group R or Group RD. In Group R, 40 mL of 0.375% ropivacaine was used, and
in Group RD 8 mg of dexamethasone was used as an adjuvant to 40 mL of 0.375%
ropivacaine.The primary endpoint was to check the duration of analgesia after the femoral nerve
block and the secondary endpoint was to check the amount of rescue analgesic consumed in the
first 24 hours, postoperatively.A visualanalogue scale (VAS) score was used to access the pain
with 1 being the least pain and 10 being the highest. The adverse reactions to the drugs were also
noted in both groups.