Therapeutic area
Acute pain
Intravenous lidocaine infusion for acute postoperative pain: what the 2025-26 meta-analyses show
Reviews in hysterectomy, colorectal and thoracoscopic surgery found lower pain scores with intravenous lidocaine, but in the 16-trial thoracoscopic review the 24-hour resting pain reduction was 0.48 cm (95% CI −0.79 to −0.17), below its predefined 1 cm threshold for clinical importance.
Opioid-free versus opioid-inclusive anesthesia: what recent meta-analyses say about postoperative pain
In an 885-trial network meta-analysis, regional techniques ranked highest for postoperative pain (low certainty), and with a block in place dropping intraoperative opioids made little difference (moderate certainty).