Managing Postoperative Pain in Older Adults

“The common belief that acute pain is merely a symptom, will resolve as healing occurs, and is not harmful in itself relegates the relief of acute pain to a minor level of priority” for many health care providers, say researchers from Mount Sinai Medical Center, Manhattan, NY and the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, Bronx, NY. This can be detrimental to the patient who is trying to recuperate from lower extremity orthopedic surgery, since uncontrolled pain can impede functional recovery, they point out. In fact, their study findings suggest that aggressively managing pain in the immediate postoperative setting may reduce the development of chronic pain.