ABSTRACT
Pain may be acute, chronic, or malignant. In this chapter, we focus on how acute postoperative pain and its management affects respiratory function and pulmonary outcome. The goal of optimal pain treatment is justifiable purely on humanitarian principles; however, controlling pain well can be difficult. Over the years, attaining optimal or even good analgesia in patients has remained an elusive goal [1-4]. Numerous elements contribute to suboptimal pain management-including attitudes of health care providers concerning the risks and benefits of pain treatment, assessment methods [5], and technical challenges with epidural analgesia [6-8]. Clinicians remain very concerned about prescribing opioid analgesics because of perceived risks of opioid-induced respiratory depression and addiction.
