Evaluation of the effect of adding ketamine in dose reduction of morphine with PCA pump in postoperative analgesia after major abdominal surgery

Patients undergoing major abdominal surgery experience severe pain postoperatively. They usually require more opioid analgesic consumption and long-term hospital stay, which consequently result in higher costs. Thus, in this double-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial we investigated if the addition of ketamine to morphine with patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump will result in improved analgesic efficacy and lower pain scores and consequently lower doses of opioids compared with morphine PCA alone after major abdominal surgery. In this study, 115 patients with baseline analgesic consumption of 1 gr Paracetamol every 6 hours, were randomly allocated to receive either morphine 0.02 mg/kg (Group M) or morphine 0.02 mg/kg plus ketamine 0.25 mg/kg (Group MK) after a primary bolus 0.04 mg/kg dose of morphine delivered via PCA. The postoperative pain will be assessed by VAS (visual analog scale) at the time of stay in the ward, during the first 48 hours in precise intervals. Also, the patients’ demographic data such as age and gender, the dose and kind of analgesic will be documented.

Mashhad University of Medical Sciences