Effects of dexmedetomidine on surgical site wound pain in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy: A meta-analysis

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of dexmedetomidine as an adjuvant to local wound infiltration anaesthesia in reducing surgical site wound pain in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang databases were searched from the time of database creation until February 2023. We performed a randomised controlled trial on the effect of dexmedetomidine as an adjunct to local wound infiltration anaesthesia on postoperative wound pain in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Two investigators independently screened the literature, extracted data, and evaluated the quality of each study. This study was performed using the Review Manager 5.4 software. Ultimately, 13 publications with 1062 patients were included. The results showed that dexmedetomidine was effective as an adjunct to local wound infiltration anaesthesia at 1 h (standardised mean difference [SMD]: -5.31, 95% confidence intervals [CIs]: -7.22 to -3.40, P < .001), 4 h (SMD: -3.40, P < .001), 12 h (SMD: -2.11, 95% CIs: -3.10 to -1.13, P < .001) and 24 h postoperatively (SMD: -1.98, 95% CIs: -2.76 to -1.21, P < .001) significantly reduced surgical site wound pain. However, there was no significant difference in the analgesic effect at 48 h postoperatively (SMD: -1.33, 95% CIs: -3.25 to -0.58, P = .17). Dexmedetomidine provided good postoperative wound analgesia at the surgical site when used for laparoscopic cholecystectomy.