Effect of Adding Magnesium Sulphate to Epidural Bupivacaine and Morphine on Post-Thoracotomy Pain Management: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Clinical Trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The researchers aimed to evaluate the effect of adding epidural magnesium sulphate to bupivacaine and morphine on pain control and the amount of opioid consumption after thoracotomy.

Why It Was Studied

Post-thoracotomy pain is very severe and may cause pulmonary complications.

Patients were randomly allocated to two groups.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 41 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Eighty patients undergoing thoracotomy at a tertiary cardiothoracic referral centre were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind trial.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and double-blind study.

Because people in this Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Visual analogue scale (VAS) score and the amount of morphine consumption were measured during 24 hr post-operation.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Analgesia, Epidural, Analgesics, Opioid, Anesthetics, Bupivacaine, Drug Monitoring, Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions and Magnesium Sulfate.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 41 patients.

The publication is from 2018 (Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, all human trials.