Contralateral Pain Reduction in Augmentation Mammaplasty Using Pain Control Catheters and Controls

Abstract

, Kazmier et al. describe their findings of a prospective, double-blind, controlled trial comparing a continuous pain pump on one side to controls involving the opposite side ina series of augmentation mammaplasty patients. They concluded that “the pain pump appears to provide breastaugmentation patients marginal improvement in pain control, although this advantage did not reach statisticalsignificance in this study.”The lukewarm results in this study may be attributable to the effects of local anesthesia on one side, causing areduction of pain on the opposite side. This was noted in our study comparing bolus anesthesia administrationin one breast to a continuous flow catheter on the opposite side.