Perioperative Use of Magnesium to Decrease Postoperative Pain in Adults
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2018
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Abstract
Magnesium has been used to treat different illnesses, from preeclamptic patients, and as an adjunct to manage pheochromocytoma during surgery. Due to its easy accessibility and cost-effectiveness, magnesium has recently emerged as a pain management supplement. While narcotics continue to be the primary treatment for postoperative pain, the concept of multimodal analgesia is evolving, and there has been a definite decrease in the adult patient’s need for narcotics after surgery. Although widely used in anesthesia, magnesium is not yet an integral component in a standardized protocol within multimodal analgesia. Students and other anesthesia providers are not given the opportunity to learn how to integrate and manage magnesium in their anesthetic properly, due to its infrequent use in the operating room. Through a literature review it was shown that the use of magnesium was efficacious and had a wide safety margin in the adult population. Anesthesia providers strive to be proactive in our nations fight against the opioid crisis and consistently seek out evidence-based research for new safe alternatives. A face to face educational session was conducted to the 2018 and 2019 Student Registered Nurse Anesthetist (SRNA) cohorts at Adventist University of Health Sciences (ADU). They were educated on the use of magnesium as a pain management adjunct to reduce postoperative narcotic use. A pre-and post-test was administered; results were collected and with the help of statistical software a correlation between pre and post scores determined an increase in knowledge amongst the SRNA’s was achieved. An understanding of magnesium’s usefulness as a pain management adjunct can help providers achieve a tight control of postoperative pain in the adult population.
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