Utility of dexmedetomidine on surgical site wound pain undergoing thoracoscopic surgery: A meta-analysis

We conducted this study aimed to evaluate the analgesic effect of dexmedetomidine in thoracoscopic surgery on postoperative wound pain, and to provide a reference for clinical use of the drug. We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Wanfang, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases, and supplemented with manual searching. We searched from database inception to October 2023, to collect the randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on dexmedetomidine application in thoracoscopic surgery. Two researchers screened all the literature according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the literature included in the study was evaluated for quality, extracted information and required data. Stata 17.0 software was employed for data analysis and the outcomes were 2 6, 12, 24 and 48 h postoperative wound visual analog scores (VAS). Twenty-four RCTs totalling 2246 patients undergoing thoracoscopic surgery were finally included. The analysis revealed dexmedetomidine applied to thoracoscopic surgery significantly reduced the postoperative wound VAS scores at 2 h (SMD: -0.96, 95% CI: -1.57 to -0.36, p = 0.002), 6 h (SMD: -0.98, 95% CI: -1.27 to -0.69, p < 0.001), 12 h (SMD: -1.19, 95% CI: -1.44 to -0.94, p < 0.001), 24 h (SMD: -0.91, 95% CI: -1.16 to -0.66, p < 0.001) and 48 h (SMD: -0.75, 95% CI: -1.02 to -0.48, p < 0.001). Our results suggest dexmedetomidine applied to thoracoscopic surgery can significantly reduce postoperative wound pain, which is worthy of clinical application.