Cardiothoracic & vascular anesthesia
Pain Trajectories After Cardiac Surgery Performed Via Midline Sternotomy
Authors' conclusion
In this study, one out of five patients had a less favorable, slowly improving pain profile, where pain was uncontrolled in the early postoperative period.
Study context
- Population
- Adults undergoing cardiac surgery via midline sternotomy over a 9-year period, single quaternary academic hospital
- Participants
- 6,390 adults
- Exposure
- Slowly improving vs rapidly improving and well-controlled pain trajectories
- Well-controlledn = 1,106
- Rapidly improvingn = 3,878
- Slowly improvingn = 1,406
- Outcome
- Pain trajectory group membership
- Follow-up
- First 6 postoperative days
Methodological detailssingle-centre, latent class analysis
- Single-centre
- Latent class analysis
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Characteristics of slowly improving vs rapidly improving and well-controlled groups
- Significantly younger (both)
- P < 0.001
- Higher BMI (both)
- P < 0.001
- History of and/or current tobacco use
- P < 0.001, p = 0.026, respectively
- Significantly more intraoperative and postoperative opioids (both)
- P < 0.001
Parts of this Brief are withheld: the automatic checks could not confirm them against the abstract.
Original publication
Pain Trajectories After Cardiac Surgery Performed Via Midline Sternotomy. J Cardiothorac Vasc Anesth. Published 14 August 2025. doi:10.
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