Postoperative epidural analgesia for patients undergoing pectus excavatum corrective surgery: a 10-year retrospective analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Managing postoperative pain in patients undergoing minimally invasive pectus excavatum repair (Nuss procedure) is challenging but essential in facilitating ambulation and minimizing the length of stay. Although multiple epidural regimens with varying opioids are presently used for pain management, there is currently no clinical consensus regarding which epidural regimen provides the best analgesia outcomes with the fewest side effects. This 10-year retrospective cohort study was performed to compare the quality of analgesia and the incidence of side effects associated with the three most common epidural regimens used at a tertiary care children's hospital, in patients undergoing the Nuss procedure. METHODS: Seventy-two pediatric patients were identified as having been treated with one of three epidural regimens for postoperative pain management following the Nuss procedure: Group A (n=12) received 0.125% bupivacaine and 5 µg/mL fentanyl, Group B (n=21) received 0.125% bupivacaine and 10 µg/mL hydromorphone, and Group C (n=39) received 0.1% ropivacaine and 20 µg/mL hydromorphone. Our primary outcome was maximal daily pain scores (numerical rating scale 0-10), with an analytical focus on postoperative day 1 scores. The primary outcome was analyzed using linear regression. The secondary outcomes included the length of stay, side-effect profiles as reflected by the number of treatments for nausea and pruritus, pain scores according to epidural site insertion, occurrence of breakthrough pain, and presence of severe pain throughout their hospital stay. Secondary outcomes were analyzed using linear or logistic regression adjusted for pain scores at baseline. The criterion for statistical significance was set a priori at alpha =0.05. RESULTS: Group A had significantly higher day-1 pain scores (score 5.42/10) than Group B (4.52/10; P=0.030) and Group C (4.49/10; P=0.015) after adjusting for baseline pain and age. No significant difference in maximum daily pain scores was found between groups during postoperative days 2-5. Among secondary outcomes, Group C had a significantly lower incidence of nausea/vomiting than Group B (P=0.003). There was also significantly more severe pain in Group A than in Group C (P=0.031). No significant difference was found between the three groups for the incidence of pruritus, critical events, breakthrough pain, or patient satisfaction. CONCLUSION: There is no significant difference in managing postoperative pain overall between the three epidural regimens employed at our center. However, in managing day-1 postoperative pain and minimizing nausea/vomiting, our study suggests that a hydromorphone-ropivacaine epidural regimen appears to have more favorable results than a fentanyl-bupivacaine regimen or a hydromorphone-bupivacaine regimen.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".