Management of Postoperative Pain: Influence of Anesthetic and Analgesic Choice

Improved control of postoperative pain is being increasingly scrutinized yet concomitantly demanded by patients, physicians, and even the federal government. Our ever-increasing subspecialization in medicine has compartmentalized much of perioperative care and has created substantial difficulty for physicians in understanding the overall influence of other physicians' perioperative decisions, including control of pain. Clearly, intraoperative anesthetic management can affect patients' pain and perioperative course remote from the surgical procedure through modulation of analgesic and perioperative stress responses. Additionally, outcome studies show that provision of improved analgesia and minimization of the perioperative stress response enhance clinical outcome in both low- and high-risk patients. This article highlights new information on how anesthetic and analgesic management influences perioperative pain and decreases the incidence of complications in surgical patients.