Biomedical Research

Purpose: The aim of our study is to compare treatment efficacy of topical analgesic gels with different ingredients in different concentrations administered to the patients presented with soft tissue trauma.

Methods and Material: Untreated patients with soft tissue trauma who were presented to family medicine outpatient clinic were enrolled into the study and they were divided into three groups. Visual analogue scale was applied to the patients at time of admission, on Day 3 and Day 5 and changes in pain severity were recorded. Group A was given topical analgesic gel containing diclofenac 1%, Group B was administered with topical analgesic gel containing diclofenac 5%, Group C was received topical analgesic gel with Ibuprofen and their efficacy in reducing pain by means of “visual analogue scale, adverse event occurrence and paracetamol tablet requirement were checked on Day 3 and Day 5.

Findings: 163 patients were enrolled into the study. There were 50 people in diclofenac 5% gel group, 56 people in diclofenac 1% gel group and 57 people in ibuprofen gel group. When efficacies of gels according to their content were analysed, Diclofenac 5% Gel was found to be the one which reduces pain scores most effectively. It was observed that while Diclofenac 5% Gel reduced VAS scores by 2.8 point at average on Day 0 and Day 3, it reduced VAS scores by 3.1 point on Day 0 and Day 5. Diclofenac 1% gel was not as effective as Diclofenac 5% gel. Systemic or local adverse events were not observed in any of the groups.

Discussion: The gel containing diclofenac 5% was evaluated to be more effective than the other gels in this study and its adverse event profile was found to be similar due to the absence of adverse events as in the other analgesic gels.

Author(s): Hüseyin Balcioglu, Fatma Tufan
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