Post Operative Pain After Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Using Airseal® Versus Standard Insufflation System: A Randomized Prospective Study

Airseal® is an insufflation management system for laparoscopic surgery which provides stable pneumoperitoneum, continuous smoke evacuation and valve-free access to the abdominal cavity. It allows an optimal exposure with a low-pression pneumoperitoneum, which is rarely possible with our standard insufflation system under a pneumoperitoneum of 12 millimetres of mercury(mmHg).

The objective of this study is to compare the use of Airseal® system with a low pression pneumoperitoneum and our standard insufflation system usually used in our center in term of postoperative abdominal pain after laparoscopic hysterectomy for benign disease.

This superiority prospective randomized trial is designed to include all patients > 18 years old referred for laparoscopic total hysterectomy for benign disease (with or without uni or bilateral annexectomy). Each patient would be randomized to one of this two following groups :

• " Airseal® " group : use of AIRSEAL® to obtain stable low pression laparoscopy with a 8 to 10 mmHg pneumoperitoneum.
• " Standard laparoscopy " group : laparoscopy realised with our usual insufflation system and a 12 to 15 mmHg pneumoperitoneum.

The primary end point is mean intensity of abdominal pain six hours after the end of surgery (H6), measured by simple numerical scale (ENS).

The secondary end points are:

• peroperative endpoints : operative time, blood loss, use of additional ways of increasing exposure, peroperative complications, conversion to laparotomy, feeling of the surgeon regarding the difficulty of the surgery (measured by a simple numerical scale)
• early postoperative endpoints : intensity of abdominal pain at the entry in recovery room (H0), at twelve hours after the end of surgery (H12), twenty four hours (H24) and forty eight hours (H48) ; intensity of scapular pain at the same times (H0, H6, H12, H24 and H48), need for analgesic administration (regarding to the standardized analgesic protocol), difference in the hemoglobin level before surgery and the first day after, early postoperative complications, necessity of a second surgery and the reason, length of hospital stay.
• late postoperative end points : estimated time to return to optimal quality of life, global satisfaction of patients evaluated by the Quality Of Life Questionnaire Short Form 12.

It will be estimate that the use of Airseal® will reduce the mean abdominal pain at H6 post operative of 1 point on the simple numerical scale compared to our standard insufflation system, with a standard deviation of 1,5. Type 1 and 2 errors were set to the usual levels of 0,05 and 0,20 respectively (power of 80%). Assuming a 10% withdrawal rate, the sample size would be 80 patients (40 patients in each group).