Postoperative pain and analgesia in patients submitted to unruptured brain aneurysm clamping

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adequate postopera- tive pain evaluation and management are priorities for quality assistance, especially after neurological surgeries. This study ai- med at evaluating postoperative pain of neurosurgical patients submitted to unruptured brain aneurysm clamping. METHODS : Prospective and descriptive study carried out in a charity hospital of the city of Aracaju, Sergipe, Brazil. Sample was made up of 28 patients submitted to elective craniotomy for unruptured brain aneurysm clamping. Mann-Whitney, Kruskal- -Wallis and Dunn-Bonferroni tests were used for inferential analysis. Significance level was 5% throughout the study. RESULTS : Most patients (78.6%) were females, 64.0% had postoperative pain. There has been significant difference in the number of days with postoperative pain among patients with as- sociated comorbidities (p=0.04) and previous surgery (p=0.01). Most patients had moderate and throbbing headache. There were no adequate pain records and most frequent analgesics were simple analgesics. Opioids prescription was incipient. CONCLUSION : Systematic pain evaluation should be part of multiprofessional assistance, in compliance with international and national pain institutions recommendations.