Effectiveness of wound site infiltration for parturients undergoing elective cesarean section in an Ethiopian hospital: A prospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Cesarean delivery (CD) is a commonly performed obstetric surgical procedure and causes moderate to severe postoperative pain. Wound site infiltration (WSI) is becoming a technique to provide postoperative analgesia in a limited-resource setting in regardless of controversy on its effectiveness. The current study is to assess its effectiveness as a part of postoperative analgesia for parturients undergoing elective Cesarean section. METHODS: A Hospital-based prospective cohort study was employed on 58 parturients that underwent elective Cesarean section. Study participants were allocated into the Wound site infiltration and Control group based on planned postoperative pain management. A student t-test was used for normally distributed data while non-normally distributed data were analyzed by Mann Whitney U test. Pearson Chi-squared or Fisher's exact test were used to analyzing categorical data as appropriate. A p-value < 0.05 considered as statistically significant. RESULTS: The median time to request the first analgesia was significantly prolonged within Wound site infiltration 314.31 ± 47.71 in minutes compared to control group 216.9 ± 43.18 with a P-value of <0.001. The postoperative verbal NRS score was significantly reduced in Wound site infiltration compared to the control group at 4th and 6th hours with p values of <0.001 and 0.04 respectively. CONCLUSION: Wound site infiltration performed following elective cesarean section under spinal anesthesia significantly prolonged time to request the first analgesia, decreases verbal NRS score, and total analgesic consumption within 24 h in postoperative period compared to control group.