Multimodal analgesia for postoperative pain control

Pain is one of the main postoperative adverse outcomes. Single analgesics, either opioid or nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), are not able to provide effective pain relief without side effects such as nausea, vomi ting, sedation, or bleeding. A majority of double or single-blind studies i nvestigating the use of NSAIDs and opioid analgesics with or without local anesthetic infiltration showed that patients experience lower pain scores, need fewer analgesics, and have a prolonged time to requiring analgesics af ter surgery. This review focuses on multimodal analgesia, which is currentl y recommended for effective postoperative pain control. (C) 2001 by Elsevie r Science Inc.