A prospective randomized double blind Study of the effects of caudal clonidine and dexmedetomidine as an adjunct to caudal bupivacaine for postoperative analgesia in paediatric patients undergoing subumblical surgery.

In this study, we compared the analgesic efficacy and safety of caudal dexmedetomidine and clonidine added to caudal bupivacaine for postoperative analgesia in children undergoing subumblical surgeries.90patients aged 1 to 8 years scheduled for subumblical surgeries were randomly allocated into three groups of 30 patients each.Group A received 1ml/kg of 0.25% bupivacaine with dexmedetomidine 2μg/Kg in normal saline 1 ml.Group B received 1ml/kg of 0.25% bupivacaine with clonidine 2μg/Kg in normal saline 1 ml and Group C received 1ml/kg of 0.25% bupivacaine with normal saline 1ml.All the patients in our study remained hemodynamically stable throughout the intraoperative and postoperative period.Addition of either dexmedetomidine 2µg/kg or clonidine 2µg/kg to 0.25% caudal bupivacaine significantly prolonged the postoperative analgesia time without increasing the incidence of side effects like nausea, vomiting, pruritis or urinary retention.Moreover dexmedetomidine did not offer significant advantage over clonidine as regards the duration of postoperative analgesia.