Multimodal Anesthesia: Post Operative Pain Control

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“There are a variety of different ways of managing pain perioperatively and we still do not know completely the best manner of managing pain postoperatively, but we have a lot more information now that enables us to do more research on this topic and figure out exactly what the best modalities are,” Calin S. Moucha, MD, chief of adult reconstruction and joint replacement at Mount Sinai Hospital and associate professor at the Leni and Peter W. May Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine, told Orthopedics Today. Also Director of critical care services in the Department of Anesthesiology from New York said “Patients need to be aware that there are ways to treat their pain during and after surgery in addition to opioids”. Opioids are no doubt very effective and powerful medication for pain control but besides contains many side effects like vomiting which ultimately slows down the process of patient recovery and poor quality life. In this scenario Multimodal analgesia which is basically the combination of two or more analgesia is a great approach in pain management and health system benefits. Also these days physicians have been focusing on nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, acetaminophen, gabapentinoids, NMDA antagonists, alpha-2-agonists, and sodium and calcium channel blocking agents. Anesthesia & Clinical Research has received so many works by the physicians on Ketamine, anesthetic agent that has hypnotic, analgesic, and amnestic effects. We will be glad to receive more work in this field. Interested authors can contribute their work as an attachment to anesthesia@peerjournal.org. In conclusion, multimodal analgesic options are integral for optimal pain management in the perioperative period but opioids still have a crucial role in pain management. Future studies are required to identify the maximum number of analgesic methods which can be effective in improving outcomes. “We think three or four is probably the maximum- more than that may only increase drug-related side effects,” said Dr. Memtsoudis. Regards Emilia Fransisco Managing Editor Journal of Anesthesia & Clinical Research