Pregabalin reduces opioid consumption and improves outcome in chronic pain patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty.

INTRODUCTION: Recently, multimodal pain control has been used to manage postoperative pain in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA). This approach combines numerous modalities, such as opioids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, local anesthetics, and acetaminophen, in an effort to reduce overall opioid consumption and also to provide better pain control. Gabapentinoids are a class of drugs that have been used as part of multimodal approach, and may be effective in patients who are previous users of chronic pain medication. The hypothesis of this study was that the addition of pregabalin reduces opioid consumption and/or improves pain after TKA, even in patients who are previous users of chronic pain medications.

METHODS: Using a prospectively collected database, 262 consecutive patients undergoing primary TKA between December 2011 and April 2012 were identified who received multimodal analgesia after surgery that included pregabalin. Using the same database, these patients were compared with 268 patients undergoing TKA from January to December 2010 who also received multimodal analgesia but were not given pregabalin. The clinical records of these patients were reviewed in detail to determine the incidence and nature of postoperative complications, opioid consumption, and visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores.

RESULTS: The incidence of respiratory, renal, and hemodynamic complications was significantly lower in the patients who received pregabalin. Gastrointestinal complications, which included nausea, were not significantly different between the groups. Patients receiving pregabalin had a lower average opioid consumption, and their minimum and maximum levels of opioid consumption were also reduced. Previous users of chronic pain medications had higher VAS scores but the same opioid consumption compared with those who were not previous users of chronic pain medications. No difference was seen in the maximum VAS scores between patients who received pregabalin and those who did not.

CONCLUSION: Pregabalin in the context of multimodal pain management may be associated with reduced opioid consumption and other medical complications in patients undergoing TKA, including previous users of chronic pain medications.