The effect of corticosteroids on postoperative edema.

In order to find out the effect of corticosteroids on postoperative edema, the authors studied the effect of 80 mg methylprednisolone acetate (DM) given IM preoperatively. Forty-four patients undergoing 88 punch hair grafting operations were studied. The procedure was exactly the same in all patients, and all patients went through two similar operations, one with preoperative methylprednisolone and the other without. In this way they served as their own controls. The frequency of edema dropped from 88.6 to 61.4 percent when methylprednisolone was used. The difference was statistically significant. In addition, the duration of edema dropped from 3.54 to 2.07 days when methylprednisolone was used (p = 0.0013). Furthermore, the degree of severity of edema was less when methylprednisolone was used.