Patients scheduled to have foot and ankle surgery will typically receive a single shot sciatic nerve block to serve as the primary anesthetic and as part of a multi-modal post-operative analgesic plan. The investigators are investigating the use of perineural dexamethasone together with local anesthetics can improve the quality of recovery for patients receiving sciatic nerve blocks for foot and ankle surgery.
Patients scheduled to have foot and ankle surgery will typically receive a single shot sciatic nerve block to serve as the primary anesthetic and as part of a multi-modal post-operative analgesic plan. Perineural dexamethasone has been investigated as an adjuvant for brachial plexus nerve blocks but its effect on sciatic nerve block outcomes has yet to be determined. More importantly, it is not known whether the beneficial effect of perineural dexamethasone on analgesia duration leads to a better quality of surgical recovery. We hypothesized that perineural dexamethasone leads to a better quality of postsurgical recovery than intravenous dexamethasone or saline control.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
TRIPLE
Enrollment
80
Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Quality of Recovery
QoR-40 questionnaire instrument consists of 40 questions that examine 5 domains of patient recovery using a 5 point Likert scale: none of the time, some of the time, usually, most of the time and all of the time. The five domains include physical comfort, pain, physical independence, psychological support and emotional state. Global QoR-40 scores range from minimum of 40 to a maximum of 200. The scores are added together to compute a total score. A low score of 40 represents very poor quality of recovery while a high score, i.e. 200 represents outstanding quality of recovery.
Time frame: 2 weeks
Opioid Consumption
Postoperative opioid consumption was converted to equivalent dose of oral morphine at two weeks following surgery.
Time frame: 2 weeks
Pain Scores
Patients were asked to rate their pain score during activity on a 11-point scale (0 = no pain to 10 = excruciating pain).
Time frame: 2 weeks
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