Effect of perioperative high-dose transdermal nicotine patch on pain sensitivity among male abstinent tobacco smokers undergoing abdominal surgery: A randomized controlled pilot study

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as men only.

In total, 101 male smoking-abstinent patients from the Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, Shanghai, China, from 8 October 2018 to 10 December 2021.

Patients started smoking cessation on admission to the hospital ward.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group and pilot study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group a baseline to be compared against.

The Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

This was a parallel-group, randomized, double-blind and controlled pilot trial.

Patients received 24-hour transdermal nicotine patches (n = 50) or placebo (n = 51) every day from admission until 48 hours after surgery.

The primary outcomes were pre-surgery pain thresholds and total consumption of analgesics within the first 48 hours after surgery.

Secondary outcomes included postoperative pain and sedation scores, nausea, vomiting and fever frequency within the treatment period.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Nicotine, Smoking Cessation, Smokers, Pilot Projects, Pain Threshold, Tobacco Use Cessation Devices and China.

Author keywords: abdominal surgery, male smoker, nicotine replacement therapy, nicotine withdrawal, pain sensitivity and postoperative pain.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2023 (Addiction (Abingdon, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.