The influence of desmopressin on blood loss during spinal fusion surgery in neuromuscular patients

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Vasopressin and Desmopressin.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are children and teenagers, both men and women.

A double-blind study comparing the effects of desmopressin and a placebo (normal saline) on blood loss during spinal instrumentation for neuromuscular scoliosis.

Patients undergoing surgery for neuromuscular scoliosis were randomly assigned to receive DDAVP or placebo.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Vasopressin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Vasopressin.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vasopressin could be set against what happens without it.

Bleeding times and plasma clotting factors were measured before the administration of the DDAVP or placebo and 60 minutes after.

Operative blood loss was carefully measured.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bleeding Time, Blood Loss, Surgical, Deamino Arginine Vasopressin, Hemostasis, Neuromuscular Diseases, Scoliosis and Spinal Fusion.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1998 (Spine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Vasopressin compound page and the Desmopressin compound page, all human trials.