Analgesics: Opiate Agonists, Mixed Agonists/Antagonists, and Antagonists for Acute Pain Management

Opioid analgesics represent one of the mainstays in management of acute pain. They are employed in the treatment of moderate to severe pain commonly as part of a multimodal therapy approach. In selecting opioids pharmacokinetics plays an important role since most opioids can be best described as pharmacodynamic equals with respect to their efficacy at receptors and propensity to produce ventilatory depression.