Comparison of the postoperative analgesic efficacy of intravenous patient-controlled analgesia with tramadol to intravenous patient-controlled analgesia with opioids.

Background: Intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV PCA) with tramadol is an accepted method to deliver postoperative analgesia outside North America; however, the analgesic efficacy of this analgesic agent when compared with IVPCA with opioids is uncertain. As such, the authors undertook a systematic review to compare the analgesic efficacy of IVPCA tramadol with that of IVPCA with opioids.

Methods: The authors used the National Library of Medicine's Medline database to search for terms related to tramadol and patient-controlled analgesia.