Articles: pain-management-methods.
-
Pain management after total knee arthroplasty and total hip arthroplasty is pivotal, as it determines the outcome of the recovery process after surgery. Ineffective pain control results in many postoperative complications and hinders successful recovery. In recent years, the transition from opioids to a multimodal pain management approach after total knee and total hip arthroplasty has increasingly become an alternative. This is due to the multitude of adverse effects associated with opioids. As a result, the use of non-opioid interventions such as acetaminophen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors, gabapentinoids, and ketamine, and techniques such as peripheral nerve block and local infiltration analgesia have become more favorable. ⋯ Selective literature supports the use of non-opioid interventions as part of a multimodal analgesics regimen for effective pain management after total knee and total hip arthroplasty.
-
Minerva anestesiologica · Oct 2019
ReviewRegional analgesia techniques for pain management in patients admitted to the intensive care unit.
Controlling pain should be a priority in the clinical practice of intensive care units (ICUs). Monomodal analgesic approaches, such as the administration of opioids, are widely employed; however, the widespread use of opioids has catastrophic consequences, given their multiple side effects and the development of dependence. Regional analgesia (RA), with single or continuous dosing using neuraxial and peripheral catheters, can play an important role in multimodal analgesia for management of pain in critical care patients. ⋯ Many critically ill, post-surgical or traumatically injured patients would benefit from these techniques. For these reasons, we aim to establish a set of potential indications integrating the use of RA in analgesia protocols routinely used in ICUs. We performed a review of literature sources with contrasted evidence levels to present RA techniques and their potential applications in ICU patients.
-
Am J Health Syst Pharm · Sep 2019
ReviewOptimizing opioid prescribing and pain treatment for surgery: Review and conceptual framework.
Millions of Americans who undergo surgical procedures receive opioid prescriptions as they return home. While some derive great benefit from these medicines, others experience adverse events, convert to chronic opioid use, or have unused medicines that serve as a reservoir for potential nonmedical use. Our aim was to investigate concepts and methods relevant to optimal opioid prescribing and pain treatment in the perioperative period. ⋯ The severity and persistence of the opioid crisis underscore the urgent need for interventions to improve postoperative prescription opioid use in the United States. Such interventions are likely to be most effective, with the fewest unintended consequences, if based on sound evidence and built on multidisciplinary efforts that include pharmacists, nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and the patient. Future studies have the potential to identify the optimal amount to prescribe, improve patient-focused safety and quality outcomes, and help curb the oversupply of opioids that contributes to the most pressing public health crisis of our time.
-
Sports Med Arthrosc · Sep 2019
ReviewPerioperative Pain Management and Avoidance of Long-term Opioid Use.
The opioid epidemic continues to be a problem in the United States and prescription opioid overdose fatalities continue to rise. Chronic opioid use threatens military readiness and puts service members at risk for medical separation from military service. Orthopedic surgeons commonly prescribe opioid medications for postsurgical patients. ⋯ Overprescribing may increase the risk of long-term opioid use, medication diversion and adverse outcomes. Preoperative administration of opioids dramatically increases the risk of continued use up to 1 year after surgery. Strategies to minimize opioid use include opioid-specific preoperative counseling, multimodal analgesia with opioid-sparing oral and intravenous medications, regional anesthesia, minimizing tourniquet use, and preoperative behavioral health evaluation.
-
Best Pract Res Clin Anaesthesiol · Sep 2019
ReviewPostoperative acute pain challenges in patients with cancer.
It is expected that the number of surgical procedures to diagnose, treat, and palliate cancers will increase in the near future. While many of those interventions can be performed with minimally invasive techniques, others require surgical large incisions and in some instances, they involve multiple areas of the body (i.e., tumor resections with flap reconstructions). Pain after major oncological procedures can be severe and many times difficult to treat as patients can present to the operating room with several conditions including preoperative pain (i.e., rapidly growing tumors and painful neuropathies), opioid tolerance, and contraindications to nonopioid analgesics or regional anesthesia. ⋯ Furthermore, it has been theorized that poorly treated pain is associated with cancer recurrence and a reduced survival. Lastly, recent research questions the oncological safety of robotic surgery in gynecological procedures and indicates the need of open surgeries, which will be associated with an increased risk in moderate-to-severe postoperative pain. In conclusion, the management of acute postoperative pain in patients with cancer can be challenging.