• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.182-186
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• 2000

The reduction of the postoperative wound pain has been a concern in recent surgery, especially in various types of minimally-invasive surgeries. This study was performed to evaluate the postoperative analgesic effect of the preincisional local anesthesia with the mixture of ketorolac(Tarasyn) and bupivacaine to the surgical site in minimally-invasive thyroid surgeries. Of 491 patients who were scheduled for minimally-invasive thyroid surgeries between October 1999 and July 2000, 244 were randomly assigned to receive a mixture of ketorolac tromethamine 15mg(0.5ml) and 0.25% bupivacaine 3ml via surgical site infiltration 3 minutes prior to the skin incision. The outcomes of these patients were compared to those of the 247 controls. Total number of patients in need of post-operative analgesic requirements(n=39, 16.0%), total dose of postoperative analgesics used($19.6{\pm}8.4mg$ of ketorolac) and Visual Analogue Pain Score(VAS, $2.6{\pm}1.2$) of the preincisional local anesthesia group were significantly lower than those of the control group(p<0.05). The mean postoperative hospital stay was $1.6{\pm}0.4$ days for the preincisional local anesthesia group versus $1.9{\pm}0.7$ days for the control group. The preincisional local infiltration of ketorolac and bupivacaine in the minimally invasive thyroidectomies reduces postoperative wound pain thus would be more beneficial to the patients.