A review of postoperative pain management and the challenges

SummaryInadequate postoperative pain management is an international problem and the need to improve its management is well documented. This review outlines some of the commonly used treatments such as multimodal analgesia, patient controlled analgesia, epidurals, perineural infusions and adjuvant drugs. Barriers to improvement including inaccurate pain assessment, communication issues, knowledge deficits, difficulties integrating evidence into practice and the challenges in the modern healthcare environment will be discussed. Following this, some options for the way forward will be outlined. A continued focus on improving the basics including accurate pain assessment and prompt treatment with appropriate analgesic regimes would make a considerable difference for many patients. Although this has been a focus for some time now, effort in this area must continue and innovative ways need to be sought to improve the basics. In addition to this, new resources recommending evidence based, procedure specific treatment and new drugs may have an impact. However, ultimately, pain management needs to become a greater priority and responsibility needs to be shared to ensure improvements are made.