ABSTRACT
There are currently no pain-relevant performance measures in place that can support efforts to enhance pain care, and research on pain management in nonsurgical, nonmalignant acute pain is sparse. The development of parenteral patient-controlled analgesia predated the World Health Organization analgesic ladder and provided clinical backdrop to individualization of acute pain management. One of the differences between acute and chronic pain management is that interventional approaches such as epidural or intrathecal analgesia are used more frequently with chronic pain and at least for postoperative pain used as frequently as the primary pain management strategy. Understanding perioperative acute pain management is important to palliative specialists. Aggressive early multimodality postoperative pain management reduces pain intensity and reduces the risk of chronic pain. Transdermal opioids and oral sustained-release opioids should not be used for acute pain management.
