New insights in postoperative pain therapy

In this review, novel clinical studies on postoperative pain therapy are summarized. Based on these studies, several conclusions can be drawn: i) following tonsillectomy, postoperative therapy with NSAIDs leads to a significant increase in the number of reoperations; thus NSAIDs should be used with caution; ii) COX-2 inhibitors in combination with intravenous opioids improve recovery and functional outcome after knee replacement surgery; iii) the combination therapy of different non-opioid analgesics has no proven clinical efficacy and should not be used routinely; iv) patients' age is not a determinant in postoperative opioid titration after surgery; in contrast, it does predict opioid consumption during the first postoperative day; v) morphine and piritramide have identical analgesic efficacy and induce nausea and vomiting with the incidence; opioid selection can, thus, be based on economic considerations and vi) if tramadol is ineffective in postoperative pain therapy, this might be caused by an allelic variant of one of the cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYP2D6); these patients should be treated with a different opioid.