Post suxamethonium pains and vitamin C

The present trial was designed to discover whether the administration of vitamin C ameliorated post-suxamethonium pains. The series consisted of 240 patients undergoing oesophagoscopy, direct laryngoscopy and bronchoscopy. All patients were ambulatory two to three hours after anaesthesia. These patients were selected for the study because ChurchillDavidson’, Burtles & Tunstall2 and others, have shown that the incidence of post-suxamethonium muscle pains and stiffness is higher in patients who undergo minor procedures and are ambulatory in the early post-operative period. Patients under the age of 55 years were included in the study. No other selection was done and they were randomly allocated to groups with and without vitamin C (table 1). Table 2 shows the average age and range in each group and also the sex ratio; table 3 shows the number of oesophagoscopies, bronchoscopies and direct laryngoscopies in each series. Patients in the group to whom vitamin C was given were asked to chew a 5OOmg tablet of vitamin C twice a day on the day previous to the procedure, on the day of the procedure and the day following the procedure. The subjects were not given any idea why these tablets were given and took