Postoperative pain management: past, present and future

While surgery is effective in treating diseases, it will inevitably cause injury to the body and subsequent postoperative pain. Therefore, it is necessary to provide patients with safe, effective, timely, and satisfactory postoperative pain management, which could lead to more comfortable recovery and better outcome. This review summarizes the history and development of postoperative pain management since the 1990s, as a series of new concepts, new therapies, and new methods have been trialed and implemented in clinical practice from then on. In the recent decade, Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) has been playing an increasingly important role in perioperative medicine. Medical professionals need to optimize the clinical practice in the directions of multimodal analgesia, opioid-sparing analgesia, multidisciplinary analgesia, and chronic postoperative pain management.