Postoperative Pain Management After Hysterectomy – A Simple Approach

Although acute pain and associated responses can be unpleasant and often debilitating, they serve important adaptive purposes. They identify and localize noxious stimuli, initiate withdrawal responses that limit tissue injury, inhibit mobility thereby enhancing wound healing1. Nevertheless, intense and prolonged pain transmission2, as well as analgesic undermedication, can increase surgical postsurgical / traumatic morbidity, delay recovery, and lead to development of chronic pain. Despite the obviously simple nature of surgical incision, however, perioperative and specifically postoperative pain remain underevaluated and poorly treated. Recent surveys suggest that 80% of patients experience pain after surgery3, 11% having severe pain, and that pain delays recovery in 24% of patients undergoing ambulatory surgery4.