Opioid-Free Anesthesia: The Pros and Cons

Abstract

Appropriate perioperative pain control is essential to aid in patients' recovery after surgery; however, acute postsurgical pain remains poorly treated and there continues to be an overreliance on opiates. Perioperative pain control starts in the operating room, and opiate-free anesthesia (OFA), where no opiates are used intraoperatively, has been proposed as a feasible strategy to further minimize opiates in the perioperative period. In this article, we address the potential benefits and shortcomings of OFA, while exploring tools available to accomplish multimodal anesthesia and ideally OFA, and the evidence behind the techniques proposed.

Keywords: Acute pain management; Enhanced recovery after surgery; Multimodal analgesia; Multimodal pain management; Opiate-sparing analgesia; Opioid-free anesthesia; Opioids side effects; Procedure-specific postoperative pain management.