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Systematic Review Essay

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Critique of Systematic Review of intravenous acetaminophen

Chamberlain College of Nursing
NR505: Advance Research Methods: Evidence-Based Practice
Fall Session A, 2013
Abstract
According to the systematic review covered by Apfel, Turan, Souza, Pergolizzi & Hornuss, 2013 there is a significant reduction in postoperative nausea and vomiting and opioid use when using intravenous acetaminophen. The reviewers used Medline and Cochrane databases to conduct their search along with a hand search of abstracts to identify randomized-controlled trials using intravenous acetaminophen. The review was to determine if the acetaminophen was going to have a significant decline in nausea and vomiting following surgical procedures as …show more content…

What was started as a study to show that there were less reports of postoperative nausea and vomiting ended up being a study that showed that the two usually ran hand in hand as you cannot have vomiting really without having nausea but on the other hand you can have nausea without vomiting so it was a little hard to show a difference in the two. But also that it not only mattered when they received the acetaminophen that it also seemed to help with vomiting more if just one dose was given than if additional doses were also given so one dose worked the best. And while they were not really assessing for pain control it was determined that there was less use of additional opioids if the patient received acetaminophen. The study has so many ands, buts and in additions to. It seemed like the results were all over the place making it hard to determine if the initial question truly was answered. Here is one example to show how things seemed to contradict each other Number needed to treat for i.v. acetaminophen was 12.3 (7.6–32.3) for nausea and 14.2 (8.3– 50.8) for vomiting. Sensitivity analysis revealed that i.v. acetaminophen reduced nausea (0.63, 0.54–0.75) and vomiting (0.42, 0.31– 0.56) in investigator-initiated trials, but did not reduce nausea (1.12, 0.85–1.48) and even increased vomiting (1.41, 1.02–1.96) in industry- sponsored clinical trials. A closer look showed that i.v. acetaminophen was generally

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