Postoperative pain in total hip arthroplasty

Abstract

Dear Editor,
We read the article “Factors associated with severe postoperative pain in patients with total hip arthroplasty” written by Petrovic et al. with great interest.[1] In this study, they aimed to determine risk factors for the development of postoperative pain following total hip arthroplasty. We would like to thank the authors for their contribution, with a successfully designed and documented study. We believe that these findings will enlighten further studies regarding risk factors for the development of postoperative pain following total hip arthroplasty.
Total hip arthroplasty is a common orthopedic procedure, and postoperative pain is one of the most common concerns of patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty.[ 2] As underlined by the authors, many risk factors may influence the severity of pain after total hip arthroplasty. However, we realized that 2 important factors are not included in the list as risk factors:
1. Anesthetic technique—The intensity of postoperative pain is found to be less severe following regional techniques like spinal or epidural blocks[3] when compared to general anesthetic technique.[4–6]
2. Intraoperative analgesic use—In particular, preemptive analgesia is found to be an effective method in terms of reducing postoperative pain.[7]
To summarize, we believe that anesthetic technique and intraoperative use of analgesics should be included in the list of risk factors for the development of postoperative pain following total hip arthroplasty.

Keywords

• Arthroplasty; Postoperative Pain; Anesthesia.