Skeletal muscle relaxants as adjunctive pain control following cardiothoracic surgery: a systematic review protocol.

Introduction: Multimodal pain control following cardiothoracic surgery remains a focus in international guidelines. We hypothesise that non-depolarising skeletal muscle relaxants can prove to be a useful adjunct for this population.

Methods/analysis: This systematic review will focus on human adult studies of pain control using muscle relaxants within 1 week following cardiac and thoracic surgery available in PubMed, Cochrane Central, Web of Science and EMBASE.