How to implement an acute pain service

To implement a successful acute pain service the following factors are the most important for success: anaesthesiologist-supervised pain nurses and an ongoing educational programme for patients and all health personnel involved in the care of surgical patients. The benefits in increased patient satisfaction and improved outcome after surgery will far outweigh the costs of running an acute pain service that raises standards of pain management throughout the hospital. Optimal use of basic pharmacological analgesia will improve relief of post-operative pain for most surgical patients. More advanced approaches, such as well-tailored epidural analgesia, are needed to relieve severe dynamic pain (e.g. when coughing). This may reduce markedly risks of complications in patients at high risk of developing post-operative respiratory infections and cardiac ischaemic events. More aggressive methods for post-operative pain management need robust routines that will discover the early symptoms and signs of potentially serious complications. High preparedness must be present for swift and correct handling of the rare but potentially catastrophic complications of bleeding and infection in the spinal canal. Chronic pain is common after surgery. Better acute pain relief may reduce this distressing long-term complication of surgery. Research into the long-term effects of optimal neuraxial analgesia and drugs that dampen glutamatergic hyperphenomena (hyperalgesia/allodynia) are urgently needed to verify whether these approaches can reduce the problem of intractable chronic post-operative pain.