Cohort participants
postoperative pain, Pain, hemorrhoids, pain, HT, NRS
HEMORRHOIDS, SECONDARY, PATHOLOGY, COMPLICATIONS
The target population for this study included adult patients (18 years or above) suffering from symptomatic grade III or IV hemorrhoids requiring Milligan-Morgan or Parks hemorrhoidectomy [The study protocol did not interfere with standard perioperative measures, and all drugs and treatments administered were recorded in case report forms (CRF).The study recorded details such as age, sex, classification of hemorrhoidal pathology before surgery, comorbidities with impact on HD, type, and length (in minutes) of surgical procedure, duration of hospitalization (HT), type of complications developed and their time of onset, in respect to the initial procedure (Table Patient and treatment parameters related to maximum pain level within 72 h after surgery. Differences were calculated using the Fisher’s exact test on the binary data, chi-squared test on nominal data, and Mann–Whitney’s Significant differences (In the present spin-off study, we questioned the already existing data set for variables predicting the development of relevant postoperative pain.Pain intensity was determined at various time points using a Numeric Rating Scale (NRS, ranging from 0 to 10), namely, at 6, 12, 24, and 48 h, as well as on postoperative days 3 and 7. Relevant postoperative pain was defined as NRS rating higher than 5 points. At this pain level, most patients require intense pain medication (e.g., opioids) [The primary endpoint was to identify factors associated with early relevant pain, which was defined as maximum NRS measurement from five postoperative time points up to day 3.The secondary endpoint was to identify predictors for relevant pain at 1 week postoperatively (day 7).Finally, the change in the patients’ quality of life from pre- to postoperative was examined by utilization of the EuroQoL Group (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) index (EQ-5D™) on generic health-related quality of life at screening and on day 7 [