Opioid-free versus opioid-based anesthesia for obese patients: Systematic Review and meta-analysis

Anesthesia with opioids has many side effects. Currently, opioid-free anesthesia (OFA) is feasible and safe. We hypothesize that reducing the exposure of obese patients to opioids during anesthesia can enhance recovery after surgery since it could minimize opioid-related side effects during the postoperative period. A systematic review and meta-analysis were managed to evaluate OFA for obese patients. We developed a sensitive search strategy aiming to include randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with no language restrictions where any regional anesthesia was associated with general anesthesia. Any drug was given before surgery to treat unintended anesthesia side effects.
PubMed, Embase, Cochrane library databases, ClinicalTrials.gov, and gray literature databases were systematically searched up to 07/31/2020. The following search terms were used: analgesics, opioid [pharmacological action] or analgesics, opioid or analgesics and opioid or opioid analgesics or opioid and free and anesthesia or anesthesia or anesthesia and obesity or obesity or obese and humans regarding postoperative complications.