After obtaining approval from the Institutional Review Board at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, we searched the electronic medical record for the period October 2013 to March 2015 to identify patients who had undergone thyroid surgery in the ambulatory setting under general anesthesia.
A total of 71 patients underwent thyroidectomy or thyroid lobectomy in the outpatient setting. Of the patients receiving adjunctive Dex, a lower proportion (50%, n = 9) received postoperative intravenous opioids when compared with control patients (79%, n = 42) (P = .017). One patient (5%) in the Dex group required rescue postoperative antiemetics as compared to 11 (21%) patients in the control group (P = .273).
Our data suggest that intraoperative use of Dex reduced narcotic administration in the postoperative period among study population patients undergoing thyroidectomy.