Comparative Study of the Effects of Transdermal Patch versus Intra Muscular Diclofenac Sodium in Early Post-Operative Period after Hysterectomy under Spinal Anaesthesia

Background Pain management in immediate postoperative period is an extremely important. As oral medication is not possible at early post-operative period, injectable analgesia most commonly used at this time. It is painful and full of side effects. As the understanding of pain pathophysiology and treatment is increasing now a days, new routes of drug delivery are being discovered with the objective of blocking pain at peripheral sites, with maximum action of drug and minimal systemic effects. Methods In a similar effort we compared the analgesic effects of diclofenac transdermal patch (100mg) and diclofenac intramuscular injection (75 mg).160 eligible cases were selected for study on first come first basis and randomization was done in 2 groups using Sealed envelope method in the management of post-operative pain in terms of adverse effects, efficacy, duration, quality of analgesia on visual analogue scale of both. Results It was concluded that transdermal patch of diclofenac had advantage over intramuscular diclofenac in being almost free of deleterious local side effects like skin eryhtema, pruritus, oedema, abscess, necrosis and this was significant. But at the same time diclofenac patch was as effective as diclofenac injection in providing post-operative analgesia. Conclusions Patch has many advantages over intramuscular and useful even if the patient is nauseous or vomiting but its use in routine practice is not so common.