March 2021

Patients who are discharged hours after procedures that used to require inpatient stays to recover don't hurt any less. Today's pain control methods must advance along with...

Numbing nerves with local anesthetics relieves post-op pain for days at a time. Freezing them with a blast of targeted cold therapy can provide the same soothing effect for...

My career as a nurse anesthetist recently began at two plastic surgery centers, where I knew I'd face significant challenges in managing PONV. Rates of the relatively common...

Surgical incisions create openings and opportunities for the trillions of bacterial cells that live inside of the body, so efforts to prevent post-op infections shouldn't end until...

Regional anesthesia provides potent perioperative pain control, reduces the risks of problematic complications and decreases the need for unnecessary opioid prescriptions....

How did your widely used scale come to be? I met Donna Wong, the late co-author of the scale, in 1981. We shared a concern about...

Everyone believes they have a general sense of "what" pain is. We've all stubbed our toes, slipped and fell, had horrible headaches or, worse still, stepped on Legos. Of course, this type of pain is incidental, unanticipated...

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols involve standardized care pathways that limit post-op pain with minimal use of opioids. Patients who enter the pathways...