Post-Operative Pain Management in Patients Undergoing Uterine Artery Embolisation for Symptomatic Leiomyomata

This project seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of a new post-operative pain relief program for women who have undergone uterine artery embolisation (UAE).

UAE is performed by an interventional radiologist as a treatment of uterine fibroids (non-cancerous growths of the uterus.) UAE can be associated with a high level of post-procedural pain and it is the purpose of this study to evaluate a new relief regimen for dealing with this acute pain.

There will be two treatment groups into which patients will be randomly assigned. One will receive the current post-operative therapy (dose-on-demand) and the other will receive the new therapy (pre-emptive dosing). Otherwise patients will receive standard management protocol for this procedure. Only patients that are scheduled for UAE will be enrolled (up to 40 patients).

The new treatment involves giving the patient their morphine dose orally and sixty minutes before the procedure begins (pre-emptive dosing) as opposed to current standard treatment which involves giving the patient a dose of morphine intravenously once they feel pain.

Information to be collected directly from patients includes pain and nausea levels, indicated on a visual scale (a 10 centimetre line showing a spectrum of no pain to worst pain imaginable) as well as their opinions of the effectiveness of the pain relief program and the procedure itself. This information is to be collected immediately post-procedure and at 2, 4, 6 and 24 hours post procedure. Each VAS will take the patient approximately 20 seconds to complete. Information about concurrent medication and procedure complications, post-operative vomiting and respiratory depression will be collected from the patient's history.