Efficacy of Perioperative Duloxetine as a Part of Multimodal Analgesia in Laparoscopic Colorectal Cancer Surgery

Abdominal surgery is usually associated with severe; wide spread post-operative pain. The greater propensity for pain and opioid-related side effects are likely contributing factors for poor postsurgical recovery, and it often results in significant pain and slow recovery. Although Opioids are considered the analgesics of choice to treat moderate to severe pain, their use carries the risk of side effects and hyperalgesia. Multimodal analgesia is advocated for perioperative pain management to reduce opioid use and its associated adverse effects. Multimodal analgesia can be achieved by combining different analgesics and different methods of administration, to provide better analgesia synergistically compared with conventional analgesia.Therefore, lower doses for each drug can be provided with fewer overall side-effects obtained from individual compounds.Serotonin and norepinephrine are involved in the modulation of endogenous analgesic mechanisms via descending inhibitory pain pathways in the brain and spinal cord. An increase in serotonin and norepinephrine may increase inhibition of nociceptive input and improve pain relief.

Duloxetine is a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor commonly prescribed for the treatment of major depression and anxiety. Duloxetine also has been used in the treatment of chronic pain conditions. There several reasons why duloxetine might improve postsurgical quality of recovery. First, systemic Duloxetine seems to have perioperative analgesic effects. In addition, as a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, it is possible that the drug may prevent transient emotional problems that are common during the perioperative period. Lastly, the combination of less pain and better emotional status can result in better physical independence scores after surgery.

The main objective of the current study is to examine the effect of perioperative Duloxetine on postoperative pain after laparoscopic colorectal surgery.