Ibuprofen with paracetamol topped the ranking after surgery
Across 39 reviews and about 50,000 people, the pair at 200 mg and 500 mg gave the best of 53 separately estimated figures: 1.6 people treated for one more to get half their pain relieved.
What the study found
Paracetamol's best showing came with ibuprofen beside it
In an overview of 39 reviews and roughly 50,000 people with pain after surgery, ibuprofen 200 mg with paracetamol 500 mg gave the lowest of 53 separately estimated figures: 1.6 people treated for one more to get half their pain relieved. Plain ibuprofen 400 mg came to 2.5.
The caveat · Never tested head to head
No drug was tested against another here. These are numbers from separate trials in separate people, lined up side by side. The authors flag 13 of the drug and dose pairs as possibly affected by publication bias. All of it is a single dose for pain after an operation, which says nothing about taking either drug for weeks. And the arithmetic that makes the pair work is the same arithmetic that makes an unnoticed second acetaminophen product dangerous.