Public perceptions of postoperative pain and its relief

Perceptions of pain relief after surgery.

OBJECTIVE To assess patients' satisfaction with postoperative pain relief. DESIGN A descriptive and questionnaire study of patients' experience. SETTING Two surgical and two gynaecological wards. PATIENTS 50 Patients admitted to hospital for cholecystectomy and 51 admitted for hysterectomy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Visual analogue scales with no divisions were completed by the patients imm...

Extradural clonidine for postoperative pain relief.

Suxamethonium and auditory evoked potentials Sir,—I read with interest the article by Brunner and colleagues on the relationship between suxamethonium and cortical auditory evoked potentials [1]. The focus of the article was the hypothesis that suxamethonium may cause arousal of anaesthetized patients, but no plausible explanations were offered by the authors as to the possible mechanism. I sus...

Memories of chronic pain and perceptions of relief.

Clinicians and researchers often ask patients to remember their past pain. They also use patient's reports of relief from pain as evidence of treatment efficacy, assuming that relief represents the difference between pretreatment pain and present pain. We have estimated the accuracy of remembering pain and described the relationship between remembered pain, changes in pain levels and reports of...

Gender differences in pain and its relief.

There is much evidence to suggest that gender is an important factor in the modulation of pain. Literature data strongly suggest that men and women differ in their responses to pain: they are more variable in women than men, with increased pain sensitivity and many more painful diseases commonly reported among women. Gender differences in pharmacological therapy and non-pharmacological pain int...

Postoperative pain relief after total hip and knee replacement