Papers of the Week

Although opioids are commonly prescribed in clinical anaesthesia, the significant side effects attributed to their overuse are raising increasing concerns. One way to reduce perioperative opioid consumption is to apply opioid-reduced anaesthesia (ORA) and even opioid-free anaesthesia (OFA), which involves regional techniques, neuraxial anaesthesia, nonopioid analgesics or combined use. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the application of OFA by using esketamine in intraoperative analgesia could minimize the side effects of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), as well as other short-term side effects related to anaesthesia.