ACS: Three tips for managing postop pain

Editor's Note

For Pain Awareness Month, the American College of Surgeons (ACS), on September 6, shared three tips for managing pain after surgery.

Jonah J. Stulberg, MD, PhD, MPH, FACS, a member of the ACS Patient Education Committee and vice chair of research for the department of surgery at UT Health Houston, gave the following three tips for safely and effectively managing postoperative pain.

• Patients should discuss pain control with their care teams before surgery to come up with a plan and understand how much pain they can expect.
• Patients should know the medications or therapies that can be used to manage their pain that don’t involve the use of opioids.
• Patients should talk to their surgeons about their pain as it relates to function, such as, it is affecting their ability to take a deep breath, get out of bed, or walk to the bathroom.

Dr Stulberg, who has researched effective pain control for more than a decade, emphasizes that patients should always seek help if they feel their pain has become severe.