3.4. Results of primary outcomes
The forest plot (Figure 3 ) reveals the network meta-analysis’
results for the primary outcomes. In terms of postoperative pain
intensity, amantadine, magnesium sulphate, pregabalin, dexmedetomidine,
ibuprofen, flurbiprofen plus dexmedetomidine, parecoxib, parecoxib plus
dexmedetomidine and S (+)-ketamine plus methadone were associated with
milder pain intensity than placebo, with SMDs ranging between -3.06
(95% CI: -4.67, -1.45) for amantadine and -0.62 (95% CI: -1.23, -0.01)
for magnesium sulphate. In terms of the incidence of PONV,
intervene with dexmedetomidine
(OR=0.25, 95% CI: 0.11, 0.54) or flurbiprofen plus dexmedetomidine
(OR=0.27, 95% CI: 0.08, 0.87) means lower incidence of PONV than
placebo.
The league table (Figure
4 ) illustrates head-to-head comparisons for postoperative pain
intensity (lower left portion) and the incidence of PONV (upper right
portion) of all pharmacological intervention strategies and placebo. The
pairwise comparison outcome are expressed as SMD (95%CI) and OR
(95%CI) respectively. The
two-dimensional graph (Figure 5 ) shows that only
dexmedetomidine and flurbiprofen plus dexmedetomidine are superior to
placebo in terms of both postoperative pain intensity and the incidence
of PONV.
In the ranking probability plot (Appendix4 Figure 4 ), for
postoperative pain intensity, amantadine seemed to be the best agent
among all 20 treatments whose SUCRA values was 96.2. In terms of the
incidence of PONV, it was proved that dexmedetomidine appeared to be the
best option among all 17 treatments for PONV with an SUCRA value of
90.3.