Guangtao Han,1,* Yuna Ye,2,* Pengde Kang1 

1West China hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Stomatology, Baiyin People’s Hospital, Baiyin, Gansu Province, People’s Republic of China

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Pengde Kang, West China hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China, Email kangpengde69@126.com

Purpose: Although the benefits of numerous intravenous vitamin C doses during the perioperative phase on postoperative pain following total hip arthroplasty for whether patients could have pain relief for a longer period of time have not yet been tested, a single dose of vitamin C can assist control pain after the procedure on the first post-operative day.
Methods: One hundred patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty (THA) at our institution were enrolled in this prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized experiment. These patients were randomized to either the control group or the vitamin C group. While the control group received an equivalent daily dose of a placebo, the vitamin C group received an intravenous injection of 3g of vitamin C every day during the perioperative period. Ten milliliters of morphine were injected subcutaneously as a rescue analgesic for patients who complained of discomfort following surgery. The amount of morphine used for rescue analgesia and the levels of inflammatory markers were the main outcomes that we evaluated. Additionally, we evaluated postoperative pain and hip joint recovery using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) as secondary outcomes.
Results: In the vitamin C group, the subcutaneous morphine injection dosage was considerably lower (0– 24h 6.1mg ± 2.7mg vs 4.0mg ± 2.9mg, p = 0.000, total use 8.3mg ± 3.1mg vs 6.6mg ± 3.9mg, p = 0.018). During the perioperative term, the vitamin C group experienced better hip motion and lower VAS pain levels at rest and during exercise.

Keywords: vitamin C, total hip arthroplasty, postoperative pain, visual analog scale, pain