Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Pain relief in cats after epidural morphine or tramadol injection
By Castro, Douglas S et al.·Published in Journal of feline medicine and surgery·2009·Department of Small Animal Surgery, Brazil·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Comparison between the analgesic effects of morphine and tramadol delivered epidurally in cats receiving a standardized noxious stimulation.
- Species:
- cat
Plain-English summary
Six healthy cats were tested to see how well two pain medications, morphine and tramadol, worked when given through an epidural injection. After the cats woke up from anesthesia, they were assessed for pain relief using various scales for up to 12 hours. While both medications helped reduce pain for the first six hours, morphine provided longer-lasting relief compared to tramadol. This suggests that morphine might be a better option for managing pain in cats after certain procedures.
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Abstract
This study compared the analgesic effects of epidural tramadol versus morphine in six healthy cats. Under general anesthesia, each cat received an epidural injection of saline 0.22 ml/kg (control treatment, CT), tramadol 1mg/kg (tramadol treatment, TT), or morphine 0.1mg/kg (morphine treatment, MT). After cats had recovered from anesthesia a simple descriptive scale (SDS), visual analog scale (VAS) and physiological parameters (respiratory and heart rate) were used to assess analgesia level to a noxious stimulus (base of the tail skin fold clamping) at 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12h post-epidural. Group TT had a higher SDS and VAS score when compared to MT at 8, 10 and 12h post-epidural. CT had higher SDS and VAS score at all time points when compared to TT and MT. In conclusion both morphine and tramadol provided analgesia in this model for the first 6h; with epidural morphine resulting in longer lasting analgesia when compared to tramadol.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19540784/