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Volume 8 Issue 3 (March, 2020)

Original Articles

Assessment of the efficacy of Intraperitoneal Instillation of Levobupivacaine (0.25%) plus Dexmedetomidine for postoperative analgesia in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy
Sudhir Kumar Rai, Rituj Raghuvanshi

Background: Postoperative pain management remains a major challenge after laparoscopic procedures. Levobupivacaine has strongly emerged as a safer alternative for regional anesthesia than its racemic sibling, bupivacaine. Hence; under the light of above mentioned data, the present study was undertaken for assessing the efficacy of Intraperitoneal Instillation of Levobupivacaine (0.25%) plus Dexmedetomidine for postoperative analgesia in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Materials & methods: A total of 50 patients were broadly divided into two study groups with 25 patients in each group as follows: Control group: Patients who were given 40 ml of normal saline, and Study group: Patients who were given 20 ml of 0.5% levobupivacaine plus Dexmedetomidine. Laparoscopic procedures were carried out in all the patients under general anesthesia. Postoperatively the patients were assessed for pain utilizing visual analogue scale (VAS) at different time intervals. Rescue analgesics (Inj. Diclofenac) was given when VAS is more than 3. Results: While comparing the mean VAS at different time intervals in between the two study groups, significant results were obtained. However; at 24 hours postoperatively, results were found to be non-significant. Smong the study group, only 6 patients required rescue analgesia, while in the control group, 5 patients required rescue analgesia at half hour postoperatively, 8 patients required rescue analgesia at one hour postoperatively, 12 patients required rescue analgesia at two hours postoperatively, 7 patients required rescue analgesia at 12 hours postoperatively and 1 patient required rescue analgesia at 24 hours postoperatively. Mean time to first analgesic requirement among the patents of the study group and the control group was found to be 142.2 minutes and 65.9 minutes. While comparing statistically, significant results were obtained. Conclusion: Levobupivacaine can be used safely for controlling postoperative analgesia in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Key words: Levobupivacaine, Laparoscopic cholecystectomy

 
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