Perioperative Gabapentin Use In Head And Neck Mucosal Surgery Patients

Patient satisfaction with healthcare is increasingly being utilized as a metric to reflect
provider and hospital quality of care. Furthermore, at the core of a healthcare team and
healthcare system is the desire to provide patients with the best possible care in order to
achieve the best possible outcomes. Providers have the duty to identify areas of needed
improvement within the domains of treatment. An area of need that is ubiquitous within
medicine is pain control; in this case acute postoperative pain control is the targeted
condition. Studies have already shown that better control of acute postoperative pain leads
to shortened hospital stays, reduced hospital costs and patient morbidity, improved patient
satisfaction and a reduced likelihood of developing chronic pain. Research within the field
of pain management has definitively revealed that a combination of different medication
regimens can control acute postoperative pain better than narcotics alone. In particular, the
medication gabapentin has been shown to improve acute postop pain in many kinds of surgical
settings, and it is a safe medication with arguably fewer side effects than narcotics. The
investigators know that certain groups of post surgical otolaryngology patients can be at
risk for high levels of postoperative pain. Given all of this information, physicians have a
responsibility to utilize medications such as gabapentin to do a better job of controlling
patient's pain. This investigation is a quality improvement project designed to elucidate the
benefits of gabapentin in pain management in patients undergoing surgery of the head and neck
mucosal surfaces. It will provide much needed data in an understudied population and
ultimately will improve the practice of pain management, patient satisfaction and quality of
care delivered in the Barnes otolaryngology department.