A study published in Anesthesiology examines the effect of antidepressant medications in reducing falsely perceived pain.
A certain number of surgery patients experience pain catastrophizing — an irrational thought process that causes a patient to feel pain as worse than it actually is, and it has been thought that antidepressant medications might help reduce pain catastrophizing.
Researchers analyzed 120 patients with pain catastrophizing disorder who were scheduled for total knee replacement surgery. The patients were given either an antidepressant or a placebo daily from the day of surgery to six days after, in addition to pain medication.
The study found that the antidepressant treatment did not reduce pain 24 hours after the procedure. They did, however, find that overall pain scores were reduced with the antidepressant treatment in the days following surgery.
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