Orthopedics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Orthopedics, including details on chronic injuries, muscoskeletal disorders, surgery, reconstruction.

Preventing the development of chronic pain after orthopaedic surgery with preventive multimodal analgesic techniques.

Reuben SS, Buvanendran A

Department of Anesthesiology, Baystate Medical Center, 759 Chestnut Street, Springfield, MA 01199, USA. scott.reuben@bhs.org

The prevalences of complex regional pain syndrome, phantom limb pain, chronic donor-site pain, and persistent pain following total joint arthroplasty are alarmingly high. Central nervous system plasticity that occurs in response to tissue injury may contribute to the development of persistent postoperative pain. Many researchers have focused on methods to prevent central neuroplastic changes from occurring through the utilization of preemptive or preventive multimodal analgesic techniques. Multimodal analgesia allows a reduction in the doses of individual drugs for postoperative pain and thus a lower prevalence of opioid-related adverse events. The rationale for this strategy is the achievement of sufficient analgesia due to the additive effects of, or the synergistic effects between, different analgesics. Effective multimodal analgesic techniques include the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, local anesthetics, alpha-2 agonists, ketamine, alpha(2)-delta ligands, and opioids.

Published 4 June 2007 in J Bone Joint Surg Am, 89(6): 1343-58.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Orthopedics Research Today. All Rights Reserved.