A new study has found that monitoring pain response levels during surgery with NOL technology (Medasense, Ramat Gan, Israel) can help reduce postoperative pain. Exploring the clinical effect of NOL guided fentanyl dosing on post-operative pain, the study demonstrated that patient pain scores after surgery were 30% lower when administration of pain medication during surgery was guided with NOL monitoring. The study corroborates the findings of the study by Meijer and colleagues that also found that NOL guided analgesia during sevoflurane/fentanyl anesthesia reduced pain scores by 33%.
The new study, just published in the Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing (JCMC),1 followed 75 patients undergoing elective abdominal surgery in a single-center prospective randomized. controlled trial. The patients were randomly divided so that one group received NOL-guided analgesia dosing during the surgery and the control group received analgesics according to standard of care (based on hemodynamic monitoring). The study showed that while there was no difference in intraoperative fentanyl consumption between the groups, the patients in the NOL-guided group reported less pain in the first 90 minutes compared to the control arm.
Read the full press release here.
- Fuica, R., Krochek, C., Weissbrod, R. et al. Reduced postoperative pain in patients receiving nociception monitor guided analgesia during elective major abdominal surgery: a randomized, controlled trial. J Clin Monit Comput (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10877-022-00906-1