Role of Preoperative Transdermal Buprenorphine Patch in Reducing Postoperative Opioids Consumption in Patients Undergoing Total Knee Arthroplasties - A Randomised Controlled Trial.

Effective postoperative pain control is a major challenge to the treating surgeons and Anaesthetists. Most opioids cause side effects such as sedation, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory depression. A number of other modalities have also been recommended for treatment of post-operative pain, including epidural infusion, patient-controlled analgesia, peripheral nerve block, continuous intra-articular infusion and local intra-articular analgesic injection. However, all of these treatments are invasive and aggressive and are potentially associated with regional bleeding, infection and nerve damage.

In the study by Londhe et al, all patients received peri-articular local anesthetic infiltration and then epidural/femoral nerve block infusion for 72 hours postoperatively. Group A received the TDB patch 5 mcg applied at the end of surgery. Group B received a combination of paracetamol and tramadol. They concluded that TDB patch is more efficacious in reducing postoperative pain after TKA surgery and can be safely used with fewer systemic side effects when compared to conventional analgesics.

The objective of our study is to investigate the role of preoperative TDB patch in reducing postoperative opioids consumption in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasties.