Enhanced Recovery in Spine Surgery and Perioperative Pain Management

Abstract

Enhanced recovery after surgery is an interdisciplinary, multimodal approach to improve postoperative outcomes by applying multiple evidenced-based interventions. It has been adapted at multiple institutions for patients undergoing spine surgery to combat the rising rate of opioid consumption. Various preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions have been introduced to augment patient care with the goal to decrease hospital length of stay and improve postoperative outcomes. Future studies will focus on health care-related quality of life outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of enhanced recovery after surgery across various benchmarks.

Keywords: Acetaminophen; Analgesia; Enhanced recovery after surgery; Gabapentin; Opioid; Pain management; Postoperative outcomes; Spine surgery.