Comparative study of gabapentin and chlorpheniramine in the management of post-burn pruritus at Kenyatta National Hospital

Abstract

Background: Pruritus is a common complication of burns and it affects the healing of burn wounds due to tissue damage caused by the scratching. It also affects the patient’s sleep and daily activities hence interfering with their quality of life. There is paucity of data regarding the aetiopathogenesis of post burn pruritus and its management. Several treatment options have been used including oral antihistamines, emollient creams, pressure garments and topical antihistamine gels. However, these have had unsatisfactory results and more recently gabapentin has also been found to be effective in the management of pruritus of several aetiologies including burns. This study therefore sought to compare the efficacy of gabapentin with chlorpheniramine in burns patients suffering from pruritus. Main objective: To compare the efficacy of gabapentin to that of chlorpheniramine in the management of postburn pruritus. Study design: A randomized controlled trial. Materials and methods: Data from 50 patients was collected by use of a data collection sheet .The patients were divided into two arms , one receiving chlorpheniramine and the other gabapentin.Visual Analogue Scale was utilized to grade the severity of pruritus as well as subsequent response to treatment and the data was analysed using SPSS version 22 . Data was presented in form of tables, bar graphs and pie charts. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskall Wallis tests were used to compare the two populations.