European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Postoperative pain management is one of the main challenges for anaesthesiologists. The addition of different adjuvants intrathecally is an attractive analgesic strategy due to simple and quick technique with low risk of failure and infection. Intrathecal opioids are the gold standard for the treatment of postoperative pain with morphine as the most effective due its potent and prolonged effects. However, over the years it is losing popularity due to dose dependent side effects such as pruritus, nausea, vomiting and the most feared risk of delayed respiratory depression. Dexmedetomidine is a highly selective alpha 2 agonist which possesses sedative, analgesic and sympatholytic properties and gives prolonged analgesia when used intrathecally without respiratory depression.