Effectiveness of post-operative pain management among patients who underwent general and orthopedic surgeries at a national referral hospital Asmara, Eritrea

Background: Post-operative pain poses significant challenges with high global prevalence. Inadequately managed pain can result in patients increased medical complications, prolonged hospital stays and reduced effective pain management. The study was aimed at comparing the effectiveness of existing and severity-based POP management of patients who underwent general and orthopedic surgeries in Halibet National Referral Hospital. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study conducted among 118 patients who underwent general and orthopedic surgeries. Data was collected by using socio-demographic, clinical characteristics and visual analogue scale (VAS). The intervention group received a severity based (SBM) POP management, whereas the comparative group received the existing management (EM). Data on severity of POP and effectiveness of its management was collected using VAS. Descriptive statistics for the demographic and clinical data, median pain reduction, and Mann-Whitney U value were used to analyze data. P< 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Results:98.3% of the patients in the EM and 88.1% in the SBM experienced pain at the initial point after surgery with mild pain (30.5%) (11.9%), moderate pain (37.3%) (54.2%) and severe pain (30.5%) (22%) respectively. The common type of analgesic used in the EM was Diclofenac (63.72%). The median pain reduction was statistically insignificant (p=0.056) in the EM group, while a significant pain reduction (p<0.001) was seen in the SBM group. Significant difference in the effectiveness of POP management was found between EM and SBM groups in middle aged adults (p=0.026), females (p= 0.016), patients who took GA (p<0.001) and patients who had general surgery (p<0.001). Conclusion: The management of POP should be based on the severity of pain experienced by the patient and use of the most suitable analgesics. Pain assessment should be performed for every post-operative patient using appropriate pain assessing tool and documented.