Acute Pain

Addresses acute pain, discussing the basic mechanisms of pain and drawing on recent advances in the understanding of the physiology and pharmacology of pain. Coverage includes patient-controlled analgesia, spinal/epidural narcotics, intrapleural catheter techniques, and transdermal narcotics.

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The care that patients receive intraoperatively from a skilled anaesthesiologist changes dramatically once they leave the operating room. Pain is almost inevitable in the post-operative period and has been managed in a similar manner for the last 50 years. In recent years, however, momentum has been generated to provide improvized analgesic care. This improvement has resulted from advances in the understanding of physiology, pharmacology and psychology of pain, and the development of new modalities for treating acute pain. This work addresses acute pain, discussing the basic mechanisms of pain and drawing on recent advances in the understanding of the physiology and pharmacology of pain. The key section of the book covers both new and conventional treatment methods. Coverage includes patient-controlled analgesia, its development, its role in different types of patients and future trends. Also discussed are spinal/epidural narcotics, intrapleural catheter techniques, nerve blocks and transdermal narcotics. Further coverage includes the acute pain service team, the organization of a pain unit, reimbursement, and hospital-based, community-based and university-based pain centres.