Impact of patient - controlled analgesia on patient's satisfaction after coronary artery bypass surgery in Shahid Rajaei Heart center in 2011.

Introduction: Pain has been pointed out as one of the concerns of cardiac surgery patients. Studies have shown that nurses often underestimate patient's pain and patients generally receive inadequate analgesia. Acute pain management has been a challenge for health professionals and several regiments have been described. We designed this study to evaluate the effectiveness of pain control with IV patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) versus conventional nurse-controlled analgesia (NCA) after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery on patient's satisfaction during the postoperative period in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Methods: In this randomized clinical trail, 80 patients undergone first-time elective CABG enrolled by convenience sampling and were randomly allocated in two groups. PCA with continuous morphine infusion was started immediately after transferring to the ICU. NCA was based on intravenous injections of morphine on demand (PRN). Pain assessment (with verbal rating scale [VRS]), sedation level, morphine consumption and side effects were evaluated from extubation until 48 hours after surgery also patient's satisfaction and nurses opinion of PCA method were obtained. Data were analyzed using SPSS 17.
Results: VRS scores were higher in the NCA group 3.27±1.17 compared with 0.75±0.66 in the PCA group (p