THE EFFECT OF ORAL CLONIDINE ADMINISTRATION ON POSTOPERATIVE PAIN CONTROL IN RHINOPLASTY PATIENTS

Background and Aim: Postoperative pain control is very important. Postsurgical pain lasts for hours and days and causes the patient to take systemic-analgesic. Overuse and frequent use of these analgesics cause side effects such as nausea, vomiting, gastrointestinal bleeding, mental affliction and ataxia. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of oral administration of clonidine on pain control in patients undergoing Rhinoplasty. In case of reduction of the need for analgesics, clonidine can be used before surgery to prevent complications of analgesics.
Materials and Methods: This double blinded study was performed on 40 patients with Rhinoplasty referring to Imam
Khomeini Hospital of Ahvaz Hospital in two groups of 20 patients randomly divided into two groups. The first group
received oral administration of 0.2 mg of clonidine to 60 to 90 minutes before surgery. The second group, as the control group, received no medication except placebo. At the end of the procedure, using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) test, the patients’ pain was measured for up to 24 hours every four hours, and the first application was recorded for the first dose of the substance. Also, the blood pressure of the patients was evaluated for the first 24 hours and the amount of ecchymosis was assessed on the first, third and seventh day after the operation.
Results: The age range of patients was 20-35 years old with an average of 25.9 years in the clonidine group and 26.7 years in the control group. The 28 patients were female and 12 were male. Mean blood pressure was significantly lower in the clonidine group without any significant difference with the control group (P>0.05). Pain score in clonidine recipients (3.35±0.23) was significantly lower than those in the control group (5.80±0.17) (P<0.05). The amount of ecchymosis in the first and third day was less in the clonidine group than in the control group, but on the seventh day, the ecchymosis of clonidine recipients (1.15±0.31) with ecchymosis in control patients (1.20±0.26) was not significantly different (P>0.05).
Conclusion: Considering the reduction of blood pressure and relaxation in the patient along with the reduction of pain and ecchymosis in the practice of rhinoplasty, the use of this drug in head and neck surgery can be further studied and used.