Prospective cross-sectional study on prevalence of acute post-operative pain and associated factors among adult patients undergoing elective surgery at jimma university medical center, 2023

Abstract

Background: Pain is a stressful condition considered to be a global health problem, and post-surgical patients are the most vulnerable for pain and its adverse effect . There was a study done at JUMC and other 2 hospital in Addis Ababa where the main objective of the study was to assess the quality of postoperative pain management, so the main objective of this study is to know the prevalence as well as the associated factors for postoperative pain. (1) Objective: To assess the prevalence of acute post-operative pain and associated factors in JUMC among patients undergoing elective surgery at JUMC, 2022. Method: institution-based Cross-sectional study was carried out from December 1 to 30, 2022 at Jimma university medical center using a pretested semi-structured questionnaire adapted from different literature through face-to-face interviews. Data was checked for its completeness, entered into EPI data V 3.1, and exported to SPSS V 26 for analysis. bi-variable logistic regression was used To find potential predictors a p-value of <0.25 entered into multivariate logistic regression. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant and Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness of fit tests were done to evaluate the model's fitness. Finally, findings were presented using figures, AOR, percentages, and a summary table. Result from The overall incidence of postoperative moderate to severe pain was found to be 50.6% at 6 hours and 54.4% at 24 hours in their postoperative period. Surgery lasting >2 hours and length of incision >10cm showed an increase in risk for acute postoperative pain and those patients who took pethidine and morphine as analgesia had less score in their pain score. Conclusion Evidence from this study revealed that the overall prevalence of postoperative pain was high in this area. This reflects attention given to postoperative pain management is low. It also revealed that duration of surgery >2 hours, length of incision >10cm, and not using morphine and pethidine negatively affect postoperative pain and increased the risk of postoperative moderate to severe pain. We recommend the availability of strong opioids and the doctors who are treating these patients need to assess pain and prescribe those drugs with greater potency