CRC ACTE PAIN MGT PDF

Preface

Since the first three editions of this book were published, knowledge relating to the treatment of acute pain has continued to grow at an ever-increasing rate, as has the quantity and quality of evidence available. There have also been greater changes in the complexity of acute pain therapies and in the type of patient seen with acute pain.

Increasingly it has been recognized that comprehensive acute pain management does not mean just care of patients with pain from mainly postoperative and traumarelated causes, but includes the management of many patients with acute pain arising from a wide variety of conditions. There has been a growing shift in emphasis from the management of the symptom of acute pain to the practice of acute pain medicine, using a more biopsychosocial and multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of individual patients with a variety of medical, surgical, and psychological comorbidities.

This fourth edition remains a practical book on adult nonobstetric acute pain management only and detailed information about the anatomy, neurochemistry, and pathophysiology of acute pain has been omitted. It aims to provide nurses and nursing students, medical students, doctors in training (interns, house officers, residents, and registrars), and allied health staff with simple and practical information that will help them manage their patient with acute pain safely and effectively. Each of the chapters has been revised and updated, often extensively, to reflect current knowledge and practice. As more patients are leaving the hospital at a much earlier stage after surgery, or major injury, or medical illness than in the past and may require analgesia including opioids for short-term ongoing management of their acute pain at home, a new chapter looking at the prescription of opioid medications at the time a patient leaves the hospital has also been added. In this setting consideration must be given to possible risks that might be associated with this prescription, and what information the patient and their treating doctors and other healthcare professionals might need to have.

Suggested drugs, doses, and treatment regimens are guidelines only and may have to be adapted according to different patients and clinical situations.

Key references have been added to the text, but a comprehensive summary of available evidence is not possible in a book of this size. Both authors have been involved as editors in the second and third editions of Acute Pain Management: Scientific Evidence published by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and the Faculty of Pain Medicine, and endorsed by many national and international professional bodies including the International Association for the Study of Pain. PEM was the lead editor for the second and third editions and SAS is the lead editor for the fourth edition to be published in 2015. Readers are referred to this document (http:// www.fpm.anzca.edu.au/resources/books-and-publications) for a more detailed overview of the evidence available for each of the chapters in this book.

Provision of safe and effective acute pain management as well as advances in acute pain medicine result from the work of many. We would like to acknowledge the help and advice of just some of the many colleagues with whom we have worked—nurses, anesthesiologists, and pharmacists, as well as those in drug and alcohol, chronic pain, surgical and medical services.