Conditions: Pain
Keywords: Preoperative gabapentin Acute pain Post-thoracotomy pain Epidural analgesia
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 146
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
One dose of either gabapentin or placebo will be given to patients prior to thoracotomy. Patients will also receive an epidural infusion, intravenous patient-controlled analgesia with fentanyl, oral acetaminophen and intravenous ketorolac as needed to achieve optimal analgesia. Pain ratings and supplemental medication use will be recorded for 48 hours and will also be assessed at 3 months postoperatively to determine whether the patients who received gabapentin had improved analgesia and/or required less supplemental medication than the placebo group.

Detailed description:
The gabapentin dose utilized is 600 mg. The epidural infusion utilizes bupivacaine 0.075% with hydromorphone 10 mcg/cc infusing at 6 cc/hour. The settings for the fentanyl patient-controlled analgesia device start at 10 mcg every 10 minutes with a 200 mcg 4 hour maximum.

Arms:
arm 1: Preoperative gabapentin 600 mg orally within 2 hours prior to surgery. arm 2: Diphenhydramine 12.5 mg orally 2 hours preoperatively.

Interventions: intervention 1: Gabapentin intervention 2: Diphenhydramine
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: gabapentin 600 mg orally within 2 hours preoperatively, epidural infusion of 0.075% bupivacaine with 10 mcg/ml of hydromorphone at 6 ml/hour, fentanyl intravenous patient controlled analgesia at 10 mcg every 10 minutes as needed with a 200 mcg 4 hour lockout, oral acetaminophen 650 mg orally every 6 hours as needed for pain, intravenous ketorolac 15 mg every 6 hours as needed for pain. intervention 2: Diphenhydramine 12.5 mg orally within 2 hours preoperatively, epidural infusion of 0.075% bupivacaine with 10 mcg/ml of hydromorphone at 6 ml/hour, fentanyl intravenous patient controlled analgesia at 10 mcg every 10 minutes as needed with a 200 mcg 4 hour lockout, oral acetaminophen 650 mg orally every 6 hours as needed for pain, intravenous ketorolac 15 mg every 6 hours as needed for pain.

Protocol document: