Role of Non-Opioid Analgesics in the Management of Acute Perioperative Pain †

Despite the rapidly expanding armamentarium of analgesic drugs and techniques for the management of perioperative pain, effective prevention of acute postsurgical pain still poses unique challenges for practitioners 1. An increasing number of complex operations are being performed on an outpatient basis for which the use of conventional opioid-based IV patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) and central neuraxial (spinal and epidural) analgesia are impractical techniques for pain management. This expanding patient population requires a perioperative analgesic regimen that is highly effective, has minimal side effects, is intrinsically safe, and can be easily managed away from the hospital or surgical center (Fig. 1) 2.