Mechanisms of postoperative pain

Good pain control after surgery is important to facilitate overall recovery, improve patient satisfaction, decrease morbidity, and reduce health care cost. However, despite heightened awareness and development of new guidelines in recent decades, we have failed to make major improvements in postoperative pain control. Currently available analgesic therapies have limited efficacy, and pain after surgery continues to be a significant clinical problem. Our goal is to develop more effective and safer clinical strategies that will eliminate or greatly reduce postoperative pain, and a better understanding of the mechanisms of pain induced by surgery would be essential to achieve this goal. Evidence suggests that the pathophysiological mechanisms and optimal treatment of postoperative pain are different from many other painful conditions. Recognizing the necessity and importance of relevant pre-clinical models, we have developed and characterized rodent incision models that have close similarities to postoperative pain in patients. Previous studies have demonstrated the clinical relevance and translatability of these pre-clinical models of postoperative pain. In this review, we describe the rodent incision pain models, and summarized our current understanding of the mechanisms of postoperative pain, highlighting key findings from our previous studies using these models. Keywords: Central sensitization; Incision; Peripheral sensitization; Postoperative pain; Post-surgical pain