Background:Our previous audit showed high levels of peri-operative anxiety which negatively impacted recovery in our cohort of 71 ocular melanoma patients undergoing surgical treatment1. Pregabalin already has an established role in the treatment of generalized anxiety and oculofacial pain2. It is routinely used in the perioperative period during joint replacement surgery and amputations within our Hospital. Hence, a
small dose of 75mg BD for 10 days, commencing on the day of surgery was introduced to enhance their recovery. Hence, we re-audited this cohort to evaluate our service provision.
Methods: This audit was duly approved by the Hospital Audit committee on (ref: TA0001514, Chairman: Dr C Williams) on 26/05/2017. 32 consecutive patients undergoing surgical treatment were audited prospectively over a 4 month period. A single QoR-153 questionnaire administered at 48 hrs postop and Qor-15 scores thus obtained was compared with our previous results1 using Mann-Whitney U non parametric tests.
Results: These are summarized in figure 1. The mean QoR-15 scores improved marginally from 126.3 (95%CI: 122.2;130.4) to 130.4 (95%CI: 124.6;136.1). The scores improved for 9 areas with notable improvements in sleep, rest, food, pain, worry and feeling sad. Sleep and moderate pain were statistically better in the pregabalin cohort. There was a marginal decline in scores for work, hospital support & comfort. The rest were similar to baseline.
Discussion: Our results are in line with expectations following the introduction of an anxiolytic during the perioperative period. The obvious limitations of our audit methodology (lack of randomization & placebo controls) makes statistics and interpretation of results more difficult. We aim to gather data in a larger cohort to confirm the results.
Conclusion: Introduction of Pregabalin helped reduce postoperative pain and anxiety, improves quality of sleep and enhanced overall recovery in ocular oncology patients.

05 / Pregabalin for perioperative anxiety: A re-audit of quality of recovery in ocular oncology patients