The concept of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) has been around for more than 20 years, introduced in colorectal and abdominal cases as fast-tracked "accelerated...

The use of continuous nerve blocks to manage post-op pain provides many benefits. Patients require fewer opioids, which lowers their risk of opioid misuse and eliminates...

A safe and speedy recovery is the result of a comprehensive process that begins long before incisions are made and continues well after patients exit your facility. From the moment...

A hernia repair will always cause patients some level of discomfort. However, there’s a big difference between an annoying ache and acute pain — or worse, chronic pain...

Help Total Knee Patients Recover in Comfort; Alternative therapies reduce their reliance on opioids to manage post-op pain.

There’s no silver-bullet, one-size-fits-all replacement for opioids in the management of post-op pain, so clinicians are experimenting with various drugs and techniques,...

The opioid epidemic has forced frontline providers, clinical researchers and even patients to think about better ways to manage post-op pain. It’s no easy task. Ask 10...

Amid our nation's opioid crisis, providers are shifting their focus to formulations and methods that make post-op pain more bearable instead of eliminating it completely....

Who Has Access to Your Medications? Reduce diversion risks with these drug security and disposal solutions.

One of our facility's surgeons is well known for sending patients home after surgery with 3 opioid pills. That's it. His patients are initially surprised and wonder if that will be...

In the absence of antibiotic alternatives, physicians in the early 1900s had no choice but to treat every infection with penicillin. Chronic pain went through a similar...

Medication errors are all too frequent in the OR. A recent observational study identified an error in 5.3% of all anesthesia medication administrations — roughly 1 of every 20...

If your anesthesia providers rely on inhaled anesthetics and opioids, they're behind the times. As Gary Lawson, MD, says: "I used to knock out patients. Now I knock out...

The pain response is a built-in warning system, nature’s way of protecting us from further harm. Chronic pain is more like nature’s nagging nuisance....

Most patients who are hooked on opioids know exactly when they started down the slippery slope of addiction, and many think back to heading home from surgery...

Welcome to the world of time-release treatments — meds that you administer before or during surgery, but that keep working for days, weeks, months or even years,...

Becoming an opioid-sparing surgeon was the most liberating thing I've done in 25 years of practice. Why? Because before I started down this revolutionary path,...

Pain Control: Cruising Down the ERAS Pathway; Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital likes the way the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery program handles its patients' pain.

Safety: How Many Pain Pills Do Patients Really Need; match the number of opioids to the procedure to stop overprescribing.

Anesthetists share the ingredients to their multimodal approach to 3 painful surgeries.