Clinical Study Pregabalin Effect on Acute and Chronic Pain after Cardiac Surgery Aik Bouzia, 1 Vassilios Tassoudis, 2 Menelaos Karanikolas, 3 George Vretzakis, 2 Argyro Petsiti, 2 Nikolaos Tsilimingas, 4 and Elena Arnaoutoglou 2 1 Intensive Care Unit, Medical School of Larissa, University of essaly, Volos, Greece 2 Department of Anesthesiology, Medical School of Larissa, University of essaly, Volos, Greece 3 Department of Anesthesiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA 4 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Medical School of Larissa, University of essaly, Volos, Greece Correspondence should be addressed to Menelaos Karanikolas; kmenelaos@yahoo.com Received 13 December 2016; Revised 20 March 2017; Accepted 5 April 2017; Published 30 April 2017 Academic Editor: Ronald G. Pearl Copyright © 2017 Aik Bouzia et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction. Pain aſter cardiac surgery affects long-term patient wellness. is study investigated the effect of preoperative pregabalin on acute and chronic pain aſter elective cardiac surgery with median sternotomy. Methods. Prospective double blind study. 93 cardiac surgery patients were randomly assigned into three groups: Group 1 received placebo, Group 2 received oral pregabalin 75 mg, and Group 3 received oral pregabalin 150 mg. Data were collected 8 hours, 24 hours, and 3 months postoperatively. Results. Patients receiving pregabalin required fewer morphine boluses (10 in controls versus 6 in Group 1 versus 4 in Group 2,  = 0.000) and had lower pain scores at 8 hours (4 versus 3 versus 3,  = 0.001) and 3 months (3 versus 2 versus 2,  = 0.000) and lower morphine consumption at 8 hours (14 versus 13 versus 12 mg,  = 0.000) and 24 hours (19.5 versus 16 versus 15 mg,  = 0.000). Percentage of patients with sleep disturbances or requiring analgesics was lower in the pregabalin group and even lower with higher pregabalin dose (16/31 versus 5/31 versus 3/31,  = 0.000, and 26/31 versus 16/31 versus 10/31,  = 0.000, resp.) 3 months aſter surgery. Conclusion. Preoperative oral pregabalin 75 or 150 mg reduces postoperative morphine requirements and acute and chronic pain aſter cardiac surgery. 1. Introduction Acute postsurgical pain and the possible progression to chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) can influence patients’ immediate and late postoperative course aſter cardiac surgery [1]. Sources of pain aſter cardiac surgery with median ster- notomy include the sternotomy incision, chest tubes, the pericardial drainage, the site of saphenous vein, or radial artery harvesting [2, 3]. e pain is described as chest dis- comfort of noncardiac origin in up to 65% of cases and can coexist with pain in the upper extremities, neck, head, and midback area [4]. Acute postoperative pain aſter coronary artery bypass graſting (CABG) surgery adversely affects pulmonary function in the first two postoperative days and can potentially delay extubation and prolong hospital stay [5, 6], thereby adversely affecting patient recovery. Furthermore, acute pain can progress to chronic pain with hypoesthesia and allodynia along the surgical incision. 56% of patients describe sternotomy pain as pain of medium intensity that affects daily activities, while 38% of patients report unbearable pain. Chronic pain aſter cardiac surgery can adversely influence quality of life even a year aſter surgery [7–10], with one-third of patients with chronic pain reporting sleep disturbances. In patients over 60 years of age, pain has been recorded even 28 months aſter surgery with reported frequency as high as 40%. Studies in female patients showed that pain persisted over a year with a significant percentage requiring treatment by a physician or physiotherapist [10]. Approaches used in an attempt to reduce pain aſter cardiac surgery include local anesthetic infiltration of the sternotomy and chest tube insertion sites [11], parasternal block [12], thoracic epidural analgesia [13, 14], and analgesic Hindawi Anesthesiology Research and Practice Volume 2017, Article ID 2753962, 7 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/2753962