Photo Credit: chanawit
The following is a summary of “Preoperative Ketamine Gargle for Prevention of Postoperative Sore Throat After Tracheal Intubation in Adults: A Meta-Analysis,” published in the January 2025 issue of Pain by Fu et al.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to examine the effect of preoperative ketamine gargle on patients with postoperative throat pain with endotracheal intubation (ETI) undergoing general anesthesia.
They searched multiple databases, including PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and ClinicalTrials.gov amd the data analysis was conducted by RevMan 5.4 and Stata Statistical Software 18 (StataCorp., Texas, United States of America). Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals (CI) and mean differences were calculated for outcomes: incidence of postoperative sore throat at 0, 2, 4, 8, and 24 hours, and anesthesia time. The certainty of evidence was assessed by the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach, and trial sequential analysis (TSA) was performed.
The results showed 10 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with 593 patients revealed a significant reduction in postoperative sore throat incidence at 0, 2, 4, 8, and 24 hours after surgery receiving ketamine gargle vs placebo (0 h: OR 0.14; 95% CI 0.04–0.47; P = 0.002; I2= 67%; 2 h: OR 0.30; 95% CI 0.17–0.52; P < 0.0001; I2 = 31%; 4 h: OR 0.32; 95% CI 0.20–0.52; P < 0.00001; I2 = 0%; 8 h: OR 0.40; 95% CI 0.23–0.70; P = 0.001; I2 = 29%; 24 h: OR 0.36; 95% CI 0.25–0.51; P < 0.00001; I2 = 0%). No reduction in anesthesia time was found (MD −1.16; 95% CI −6.44–4.11; P = 0.67).
Investigators concluded that prophylactic ketamine gargle was effective in lowering the incidence in patients of postoperative sore throat at all studied time intervals requiring ETI under general anesthesia compared to placebo.
Source: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/prm/7622696
