A Review of Postoperative Pain Management for Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery

Abstract

BackgroundPerioperative opioid use has been linked to abuse potential by patients, leading surgeons to scrutinize their postoperative prescribing practices. The goal of the study was to review analgesic regimens for patients undergoing thyroidectomy and parathyroidectomy and extrapolate changes that could be made to decrease opioid use while maintaining adequate pain control. Materials and methodsA literature review was performed. Inclusion criteria were studies 1) written in English, 2) published within the last 20 years, and 3) that included human subjects. Exclusion criteria were studies that 1) evaluated anesthesia regimens exclusively, 2) compared surgical approaches and their effects on pain (e.g., open neck exposure vs. transoral route for thyroidectomy), or 3) included patients undergoing concurrent lateral neck dissection. Of 951 studies originally identified, 10 studies met the criteria. ResultsTen studies were identified, and each evaluated a different analgesic regimen. Five of the studies found a decrease in pain with multimodal regimens. Of the remaining studies, three found no difference in pain control, one found an increase in pain when only an opioid patient-controlled analgesia was used, and one found that 93% of patients required less than 20 oral morphine equivalents postoperatively. ConclusionsThere is no postoperative analgesic regimen that has been established as optimal for patients undergoing parathyroidectomy and thyroidectomy in the current medical literature. However, half of the studies included in this review found that nonopioid adjuncts decreased patients’ need for postoperative opioids.