Professional Development/Article Review

Otten, C., & Dunn, K. (2011). Multimodal analgesia for postoperative total knee arthroplasty. Orthopaedic Nursing, 30(6), 373-380. This retrospective study looked at forms of analgesia used during and after surgery and which ones offered the most pain relief for the patients post-operatively. The statistics that they gathered from M. Dautys article Physical training in rehabilitation programs before and after total hip and knee arthroplasty, stated that about 320,000 patients had a TKA in the United States in 2002. He also proposed that this number of TKA patients will likely increase as the baby boomer population ages. Information from the Federal Interagency Forum on AgingRelated Statistics claimed that by 2030, the older population will reach about 70 million people, doubling recent numbers. Since pain post-operatively for TKA can be severe, pain management is a vital concern for the nurses caring for these patients since elevated pain levels can decrease the likelihood that patients will want to ambulate after surgery. And if they prolong when they start to ambulate, they are essentially prolonging their hospital stay and recovery period. The four analgesias that were looked over in this article include: One time injection of intrathecal morphine sulfate (ITM) and local anesthetic ITM and local anesthetic with a single-shot femeral nerve block (FNB) ITM and local anesthetic with a catheter placed extracapsular to allow for continuous infusion of the local anesthetic ITM and local anesthetic with FNB and a catheter placed extracapsular to allow for continuous infusion of the local anesthetic