Treating acute musculoskeletal pain in the Emergency Department is a common occurrence – and even on the docket as a time-to-analgesia quality measure. Where we frequently see failures and delays, however, are in children, with much written regarding oligoanalgesia and the dragging of feet before any sort of pain management. Furthermore, adults are frequently managed with opiate therapy, which, despite its various pitfalls, may be considered to stand above the commonly used ibuprofen and acetaminophen monotherapy in children.
So, does it work better to combine an oral non-steroidal analgesic with opiate therapy in children? Or, perhaps, is even an opiate alone better with regard to adverse effects? That is the question asked by this three-arm, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized trial. Children with painful musculoskeletal injuries were randomized either ti 10mg/kg oral ibuprofen, 0.2mg/kg oral morphine, or the combination of both.
The winner is: not children. With 91 analyzed in the ibuprofen-only arm, 188 in the morphine-only arm, and 177 in the combination arm, there were no reliable differences between analgesia between groups. More disappointingly, the average pain score on the visual analogue scale was ~60mm across all groups, and no group improved more than 20mm within an hour. The authors considered a VAS score of <30mm at 60 minutes to represent adequate pain control, and less than a third from each group achieved this. There were no serious adverse events in any group, but 20% of those receiving morphine complained of mild adverse events, mostly nausea and abdominal pain, compared with 7% of the ibuprofen-only arm.
So, still at square one for oral analgesia – but, at least, this negative trial helps inform our avoidance of the intervention tested here.
“Oral Analgesics Utilization for Children With Musculoskeletal Injury (OUCH Trial): An RCT”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/10/09/peds.2017-0186