BACKGROUND

Post-laparoscopic shoulder pain is very common after laparoscopy. One method to reduce postoperative shoulder pain is the pulmonary recruitment maneuver. It is used to reduce post-laparoscopic shoulder pain. This study utilizes a truly experimental, double-blinded, prospective randomized design to assess the effect of pulmonary recruitment maneuvers on post-laparoscopic shoulder pain after laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

METHODS

Sixty patients were allocated randomly into two groups. The intervention group received five manual pulmonary inflations for 5 s at a maximum pressure of 25 cm HO. The control group included patients whose residual CO gas was evacuated from the abdominal cavity using passive exsufflation as the routine method at the end of surgery by abdominal massage. Gentle abdominal pressure was applied to facilitate CO gas removal.

RESULTS

When Ramsay's Sedation Score's results were compared between the two groups after the operation, there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups during the first and (p value = 0.20) second (p value = 0.61) hours. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the pulmonary recruitment maneuver is significant (p-value 0.001) and had a high effect size (0.527) in reducing shoulder pain among laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients after controlling the effect of other covariate patient characteristics.

CONCLUSION

Utilizing a pulmonary recruitment maneuver at the end of laparoscopic surgery reduces shoulder pain.