Safety and Duration of Low-Dose Adjuvant Dexamethasone in Regional Anesthesia for Upper Extremity Surgery: A Prospective, Randomized, Controlled Blinded Study.

Background: Orthopedic procedures concerning the upper extremity commonly use a brachial plexus nerve block to achieve postoperative analgesia. The addition of dexamethasone to peripheral nerve blocks has been shown to significantly prolong its effect. We hypothesize that 1 mg doses of dexamethasone will prolong brachial plexus nerve block with similar efficacy to 4 mg and better than ropivacaine alone.

A Multimodal Pain Management Regimen for Open Treatment of Distal Radius Fractures: A Randomized Blinded Study.

Background: Adequate pain control is critical after outpatient surgery where patients are not as closely monitored. A multimodal pain management regimen was compared to a conventional pain management method in patients undergoing operative fixation for distal radius fractures. We hypothesized that there would be a decrease in the amount of narcotics used by the multimodal group compared to the conventional pain management group, and that there would be no difference in bone healing postoperatively.