Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen offer better pain management and fewer side effects than codeine following surgery.

Researchers said they found that people who took NSAIDs had lower pain levels at 6 and 12 hours after surgery compared with their counterparts who took codeine.

“In all surgery types, subgroups and outcome time points, NSAIDs were equal or superior to codeine for postoperative pain,” the study authors wrote.

“We found that patients randomized to NSAIDs following outpatient surgical procedures reported better pain scores, better global assessment scores, fewer adverse effects, and no difference in bleeding events, compared with those receiving codeine,” they added.

The researchers reviewed 40 randomized control trials (RCTs) of more than 5,100 adults to compare the safety of medications containing codeine and NSAIDs as well as their efficacy in reducing pain.

“We found high-quality evidence that outpatient postoperative adults taking NSAIDs reported less pain at 6 and 12 hours than those taking codeine in a meta-analysis of RCTs,” the researchers wrote.

Sean Mackey, chief of the Division of Stanford Pain Medicine at Stanford University in California, said the results of the study aren’t surprising.

We don’t use it much in the United States for postoperative pain at all,” Mackey explained.

“What we frequently do in pain management, in postoperative pain management, is that we’ll combine these types of medications.

Both NSAIDs and codeine have potential side effects.

In the Canadian study, the researchers found that those who took NSAIDs following surgery had fewer adverse effects than those who took codeine.

Although the Canadian study concluded that NSAIDs offer better pain management and fewer side effects postoperatively than codeine, Mackey said the results do not imply the same could be said for other opioids.