The efficacy of intraoperative periarticular injection in Total hip arthroplasty: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Periarticular injection (PAI) is a regional analgesia method performed in total hip arthroplasty (THA) for postoperative pain relief. However, its efficacy and safety is still inconclusive. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to assess the safety of PAI and to determine if PAI provides better pain relief and reduce the consumption of opioids after THA. METHODS: We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and the Cochrane Library comprehensively. Only randomized control trials were included in our meta-analysis. Eleven studies that compared the efficacy of PAI with the control group were included. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines and Jadad score were applied to assess the quality of the included studies. We used the recommendations by the Cochrane Collaboration to reduce bias and to ensure our results were reliable and veritable. RESULTS: Our analysis demonstrated that PAI was more effective than the control group with a lower visual analog scale (VAS) score during rest at 24 h (P = 0.003), 48 h (P = 0.002), and VAS score with activity at 24 h (P = 0.04). There was also less amount of opioid consumption (P = 0.01). There were no differences in length of hospital stay (P = 0.526) and postoperative nausea rate (P = 0.153). CONCLUSION: Compared with the control group, PAI showed better pain relief and less amount of opioid consumption after THA. Our meta-analysis suggests that PAI is a safe and effective multimodal analgesia technique that can be used for THA. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12891-019-2628-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.