A pilot study for the relationship between habitual dietary caffeine consumption and intraoperative analgesic requirements in patients undergoing laparoscopic surgeries

Background: The most used psychoactive substance worldwide is caffeine. Acute caffeine administration in a laboratory setting or caffeine as an adjuvant have been shown to have pain-relieving effects. The possible effects of habitual dietary caffeine consumption on the use of intraoperative analgesics and pain perception, however, are far less well understood. Methods: Design: A prospective observational exploratory pilot study. Setting: Single university teaching hospital’s operating rooms. Patients: After institutional approval of the study design, 90 surgical patients - scheduled for laparoscopic surgery-were surveyed about their average daily caffeine consumption. They were then grouped to either: non consumers, low caffeine consumers and high caffeine consumers. Objectives: This pilot study aimed to explore the relationship between the amount of daily dietary caffeine consumption and intraoperative analgesic requirements. Results: In this study, no significant difference was found between the three study groups as regard intraoperative analgesic requirements, hemodynamics, recovery time, postoperative headache, and postoperative sedation level. However -although statistically insignificant-both caffeine consumers groups had higher intraoperative analgesic consumption. Additionally, higher consumer group had earlier request time of postoperative 1st rescue analgesia. Conclusion: Despite the limitations of any pilot study, our results suggest that habitual caffeine -whether in low or high consumers-had no significant effect on intraoperative analgesic requirements, when compared to non-consumers group. The data presented require careful consideration and promote the need for further studies with larger sample size as our study is an exploratory pilot study with small sample size.