Propofol and sevoflurane as frequently used general anesthetics can affect postoperative pain. Our study explored whether the incidence of postoperative pain differed among patients with chronic pain undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA) anesthetized with sevoflurane or propofol.
Patients were randomly assigned to groups receiving either sevoflurane (Group S, n = 50) or propofol (Group P, n = 47) for anesthesia maintenance during TKA. The incidences of postoperative pain and quality of life (QoL) were measured using the EuroQol 5-Dimension (EQ-5D) scale at 1, 3, and 7 days post-operation (DPO), and 1 and 3 months post-operation (MPO).
At 3 DPO, fewer patients reported moderate pain (P = 0.001) and more patients reported no pain (P = 0.003) in Group S than that in Group P. At 3 MPO, more patients reported no pain (P = 0.04) and fewer patients reported moderate pain (P = 0.04) in Group S than in Group P. No significant differences were found in the incidence of postoperative pain between the 2 groups of patients at the other time points. The EQ-5D scores were higher in Group S than in Group P (P = 0.022), and the difference was 0.15 at most, which was not optimal. The EQ-5D clinical results might be not very significant.
Sevoflurane anesthesia may have potential advantages in reducing postoperative pain in patients undergoing TKA with a preoperative VAS score > 4.