Comparison of Analgesic Effects of CT-Guided Celiac Plexus Neurolysis With Pharmacotherapy as Palliative Care of Upper Gastrointestinal Malignancies

After enrolment, patients were randomly assigned to two groups by means of a lottery procedure, whereby each patient blindly chose one of two labelled slips, resulting in group assignment to receive. Group A patients were subjected to CT-guided celiac plexus neurolysis, and Group B patients to standard pharmacotherapy for managing the pain over a period of four weeks.

CT-guided celiac plexus neurolysis under the supervision of the principal investigator, using local anaesthetic and absolute ethanol injection for neurolysis, was carried out using aseptic technique. Baseline demographic information, which included age, gender, nature of malignancy, and the duration of disease, was recorded using a predesigned proforma. Pain severity was measured by the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), a recognised 0-10 scale where 0 = no pain to 10 indicating the worst imaginable pain, at baseline and after 4 weeks of treatment. The major outcome measure was the average pain score at four weeks in both groups.