Evaluation of predictive factors of postoperative pain in ambulatory hand surgery.
Hand surgery can cause significant pain that could be difficult to control. A pilot study has already been done to establish a standardised clinical route and demonstrate the feasibility of the method for collecting postoperative data, documented at home by the patient himself.
This study is based on the coded reuse of clinical data for a pooled analysis, concerning postoperative pain of hand and wrist pathologies treated at the outpatient surgery centre at the CHUV (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois).
An application that can be downloaded by the patient was used to document their postoperative pain in a systematic way as part of his or her clinical follow-up. This data was coded, and the relationship between the different predictors of postoperative pain and its intensity was evaluated.
The studied potential predictive factors of postoperative pain are the patient's age, gender, type of tissue operated (skin, bone, nerve, ligament, tendon, vessels), the nature of operation performed (reparation, reconstruction, liberation, arthroscopy, excision of a tumour), the length of the operation (or operating time), the type of anaesthesia used during the intervention, and analgesic drugs consumed postoperatively by the patient.
By identifying the factors predicting postoperative pain in hand surgery, we aim to accelerate pain relief, which as a result increases the patient’s quality of life and reduces distress.