title: Postoperative pain management: why is it difficult to show that it improves outcome?
abstract: Intuitively it seems obvious that unrelieved, severe acute pain after surgery may have a number of undesirable effects [1]. Many experienced clinicians maintain that the immediate postoperative course as well as long-term outcome may be influenced by the quality of pain relief after surgery or trauma [1, 2]. However, there are conflicting data from published clinical studies concerning the beneficial effects of postoperative pain management on short-term and long-term outcome of surgery [3].
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology, National Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Breivik
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D006801:Humans; D010149:Postoperative Pain / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D016896:Treatment Outcome