Role of magnesium sulfate in postoperative analgesia.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Magnesium Sulfate and Morphine, published as a randomized controlled trial.

An assessment was made of the effect of the physiologic N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist magnesium on analgesic requirements, pain, comfort, and quality of sleep in the postoperative period.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 42 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

Postoperative morphine requirement was assessed for 48 h using patient-controlled analgesia.

How the Study Was Run

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

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Magnesium Sulfate group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Magnesium Sulfate, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Maximum expiratory flow (peak flow), pain at rest and during peak flow, and discomfort were evaluated up to the 48th postoperative hour, and 1 week and 1 month after surgery.

Insomnia was evaluated after the first and second postoperative nights.

What Was Measured

An assessment was made of the effect of the physiologic N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist magnesium on analgesic requirements, pain, comfort, and quality of sleep in the postoperative period.

The subject headings attached to it are Analgesia, Patient-Controlled, Analgesics, Opioid, Hysterectomy, Intraoperative Care, Magnesium Sulfate, Morphine and Postoperative Pain.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Magnesium Sulfate and Morphine in 42 patients.

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 1996 (Anesthesiology), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.