Postoperative Pain clinical trials at UCLA

Pain management in pediatric patients presents a difficult challenge. Unlike adults, pediatric patients often cannot communicate their pain management needs clearly. This is especially true in patients with cerebral palsy (CP), who often have concomitant developmental delay, intellectual disability and verbal limitations. Current literature indicates pain as a common experience for children with CP but has been understudied in this population. Moreover, inadequate post-operative pain control can result in negative physiologic and psychological complications and lead to poor surgical outcomes. Currently, perioperative pain management following orthopaedic procedures in pediatric patients follows traditional protocols that rely on the administration of opioid medications despite their known adverse side effects including nausea, vomiting, itching, constipation, urinary retention, confusion, and respiratory depression. Epidural anesthesia is a key modality in traditional pain management for pediatric patients with CP given its proven efficacy in decreasing pain and managing spasticity. Yet, administering epidural anesthesia in this patient population poses several risks including damage to preexisting intrathecal baclofen pumps, iatrogenic infection, and technically demanding insertion given high rates of concomitant neuromuscular scoliosis. Alternatively, multimodal analgesic injections theoretically offer an efficacious adjunct to traditional pain management protocols with a lower risk profile. Preliminary data from our study group's pilot randomized control trial comparing the safety and efficacy of a multimodal surgical site injection to placebo showed decreased pain scores and narcotic consumption postoperatively in this patient population. Based on these promising results, the objective of this randomized control trial is to evaluate the efficacy of a multimodal surgical site injection compared to epidural anesthesia for postoperative pain control following operative management of hip dysplasia in pediatric patients with CP.

The purpose of this study to investigate post-operative pain control in pediatric patients with closed supracondylar humerus fracture who undergo closed reduction and percutaneous pinning. Currently, it is standard of care that patients receive a narcotic prescription for post-operative pain control. All patients will initially be seen in our pediatric urgent care and recruited at the time of surgery. Patients will be randomized to receiving acetaminophen and ibuprofen or acetaminophen and oxycodone. Parents will not be blinded to the acetaminophen but both investigators, parents and the patients will be blinded to the study drug (ibuprofen or oxycodone). Pain level will be assessed using the Wong-Baker FACES scale and parents will be asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their satisfaction with the surgery and pain control. Parents will also fill out a medication log until the patient no longer requires pain medication. The duration of participation in the study is approximately 1 week and requires 2 visits (time of recruitment at surgery to 1st post-op visit). This study is being conducted in hopes of reducing opioid prescription after surgical fixation of uncomplicated supracondylar humerus fractures if our study can show that patient's pain levels post-operatively and parent/patient satisfaction are unchanged or improved in the acetaminophen and ibuprofen arm.