Abstract

Opioids have been the mainstay for management of acute postoperative pain for several decades. Extensive use, however, has been associated with multiple side effects. Multimodal approaches that incorporate nonopioid medications and techniques have been observed to achieve optimum pain control whilst decreasing side effects. Such strategies are particularly important to consider for opioid-dependent and tolerant patients with various comorbidities undergoing different types of surgery. This review assesses recent data on nonopioid analgesics for postoperative pain control, highlighting evidence of their safety profiles in contemporary pain management.

Keywords: Non-opioids, peri-operative analgesia, opioid sparing, multi-modal analgesia.