ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of pain management in older adults across multiple clinical care settings. Uncontrolled pain is an obvious quality of life issue across all ages, but epidemiological literature suggests that pain is most prevalent in older adult population. Pain assessment tools should be used and documented consistently across all clinical care settings that are appropriate to patient’s cognitive abilities. The chapter outlines some changes in the context of pain and pharmacotherapy. Pain threshold studies have shown that somatosensory thresholds for non-noxious stimuli increase with age, whereas pressure pain thresholds decrease and heat pain thresholds show no age-related changes. Acetaminophen is used pre- and postoperatively in the management of pain related to major pelvic, abdominal, and orthopedic surgical or trauma-related pain as part of multimodal analgesia. Gabapentin and pregabalin can be considered in patients when conventional analgesic medications are not adequate in managing acute pain.
