Comparing analgesic efficacy of different interventions after arthroscopic shoulder surgery

Comparing analgesic efficacy of different interventions after arthroscopic shoulder surgery: a reply

“…Lastly, we think it is inappropriate to mislead readers that an absolute reduction of 10 mg intravenous morphine equivalents is the minimal clinically important difference for all surgical procedures. There are procedure-specific considerations, and the review quoted [1] related to patients having total knee or hip arthroplasties that are not only associated with significantly more postoperative pain, but also include a substantial number of patients requiring pre-operative opioids.…”

“…We thank Drs Xue et al. for their interest and comments [1] regarding our article [2]. They contend that pre‐operative pain is an important influence on postoperative pain, and we agree, so for this reason, patients with a history of daily opioid intake in the previous month (indirectly reflective of severity of pain), were excluded.…”