This study involves patients with sickle cell anaemia who experience a painful complication called a vaso-occlusive crisis, which occurs when blood flow is blocked in blood vessels, causing severe pain. The study will compare two different pain treatment approaches. One group of patients will receive morphine hydrochloride alone, which is a strong pain medication, while the other group will receive a combination of morphine hydrochloride and lidocaine hydrochloride, which is a local numbing medication. Both treatments will be given through a vein using a method called patient-controlled analgesia, which allows patients to control their own pain medication doses within safe limits set by doctors.
The purpose of the study is to find out if adding lidocaine hydrochloride to morphine hydrochloride can reduce the total amount of morphine needed to control pain during a vaso-occlusive crisis. The study is designed so that neither the patients nor the doctors will know which treatment each patient is receiving during the trial, which helps ensure fair results. Patients will be randomly assigned to receive either the combination treatment or morphine alone.
During the study, researchers will measure how much morphine each patient uses, track changes in pain levels using a pain rating scale, monitor certain substances in the blood that may indicate how the body is responding to treatment, and watch for any unwanted effects that morphine might cause. The study will help doctors understand whether combining these two medications provides better pain relief with less morphine compared to using morphine by itself.
Belgium 