Is It Worth Using Caffeine Containing Otc Medicines For...

Is it worth using Caffeine containing OTC medicines for acute pain? Background: Pain is an unpleasant experience which can be simply described as ‘something that hurts the body’. According to the British Pain society acute pain is pain that doesn t last any longer than twelve weeks (British Pain Society s.d.). However, acute pain caused by conditions like, headaches, postoperative pain and post partum pain, can greatly disrupt the everyday routine of an individual. This, in turn, will lead them to resort to simple anaelgesics such as: Paracetamol, iBuprofen and Aspirin etc (Shipley M, et al 2011). Furthermore, caffeine is also used with common analgesics in doses varying from 15mg up to 200mg to enhance their effects (Medicines†¦show more content†¦Therefore, making the review highly reliable to use while making decisions in healthcare settings (Cochrane Community (beta) 2014). The systematic review included over 20 studies which compared the effects of oral analgesics with and without caffeine, the studies used â€Å"were all randomised and double blind† (Derry C.J. et al, 2014, p. 2 and12). Each study included a minimum of 10 participants each of atleast age 16 years or older (Derry C.J. et al, 2014, p. 6). The fact that the studies were all randomised, adds to the credibility of the review because the evidence used can be graded of being â€Å"high quality† (Petrisor B.A. and Bhandari. M, 2007). Most of the studies in the review focused on very common acute pain conditions, such as: dental pain, headache, post operative dental pain and post partum pain (Derry C.J. et al, 2014, p. 2). The combined difference for 50% of the maximum pain relief between the control group and the intervention group was 7%, which gave an effect size of 0.07 without any side effects (Derry C.J. et al, 2014, p. 2). Although the effect size was quite small, due to the large quantity of participants, the results showed very promising evidence in favor of the addition of caffeine to the analgesics. The summary of the results showed that 48% of the intervention group agreed that they achieved 50% of the maximum pain