ABSTRACT
Pain relief is considered a humanitarian right with increasing ethical and legal implications. With growing subspecialization of modern medicine, specialists such as urologists and gynecologists will need to involve “experts in pain medicine” to manage pain to the high standards now considered the norm. This chapter aims to broaden the understanding of the principles of acute pain relief for the urological patient, but many of the approaches may also be applied to other groups of urogenital pain. Most patients will benefit from the basic principles of analgesia provision discussed in this chapter; this process starts with the assessment of pain, through to the treatment of pain and reviewing the effectiveness of treatment to enable treatment modification as appropriate. The understanding of the underlying pathophysiology of acute pain after surgery and its transition to become chronic is essential to improve the care for the complex pain patient, for example the patient undergoing repeated surgery. Similarly, an understanding of such mechanisms will improve the management of a patient with chronic opioid use or addiction, in whom a routine cystoscopy can lead to excruciating pain. There is increasing evidence that treating acute pain well will reduce the incidence of chronic pain (1).
DEFINITION
