BACKGROUD

Postoperative pain following total knee arthroplasty (TKA) may hamper patients from a rapid recovery and increase perioperative blood loss and stress on the cardiovascular system. Therefore, our objective was to assess perioperative outcomes after TKA in patients who were not candidates for the additional nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in a multimodal pain control regimen.

METHODS

Propensity score matching for age, sex, body mass index, American Society of Anesthesiologists class, and preoperative hemoglobin level was conducted on patients undergoing unilateral TKA, and thereby 52 patients remained in each group. The control group comprised patients who received parenteral parecoxib every 12 hours during the first 48 hours after TKA. The No-NSAIDs group did not receive NSAIDs because of known contraindications. Identical postoperative pain control including intravenous patient-controlled analgesia was applied for all patients. Visual analog scale (VAS) score for pain, knee flexion, blood loss, serum cardiac troponin-T (cTnT), and length of stay (LOS) were determined.

RESULTS

The No-NSAIDs group had significantly higher VAS scores in 6-96 hours and consumed more morphine at 24 hours and 48 hours after the surgery than the control group. The No-NSAIDs group had significantly less knee flexion at 48 hours ( = 0.045) and tended to have more emesis and longer LOS than the control group. The blood loss of the No-NSAIDs and control group was 552.52 mL and 397.65 mL ( = 0.02), respectively, and blood transfusion rate was 23.1% and 17.3% ( = 0.63), respectively. The cTnT of the No-NSAIDs group rose over the first 48 hours and was significantly higher than that of the control group at 48 hours.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients who were not candidates for NSAIDs had significantly higher pain scores and consumed more morphine after TKA. They also tended to have greater blood loss and the rising of cardiac biomarkers during the first 48 hours after TKA. Hence, these patients may benefit from supplementary analgesia and appropriate perioperative monitoring.