Pain relief and clinical outcome: from opioids to balanced analgesia

Abstract

If it is generally accepted that adequate postoperative pain relief will improve outcome from surgery, several controlled trials demonstrated this only for lower body surgical procedures with epidural and spinal anesthetics. Important effects on outcome were not shown when postoperative opioids were administered with patient controlled (PCA) or epidural techniques. However, the most optimal pain relief seems to be best achieved with balanced analgesia techniques using combinations of epidural opioids and local anesthetics and systemic non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs. Future efforts should aim at including physical rehabilitation programs in the pain treatment regimen.