Severe Pain After Surgery

After post-operative nausea and vomiting, pain after surgery is one of the most feared problems to deal with.  In most large surgical cases we cannot prevent pain after surgery completely, but it is likely we can eliminate most of it.  To do so we must be prepared before the procedure.  There are several steps which the American Society of Anesthesiologists considers important such as continuing certain medications, treatments to reduce preexisting pain and anxiety, premedication before surgery to reduce pain and education of the patient and family.

Other techniques that can be used are epidural medications (please see our section on epidurals) and regional techniques (see section on regional techniques).  These are procedures that over the years have proved to be very effective in controlling and almost completely eliminating pain after surgery.   in addition there are commonly known medications such as to NSAIDs or Tylenol which play an important role.  All of these should be considered and discussed with your anesthesia provider.