The new normal – pain control in COVID era

Abstract

Pain is a universal phenomenon; every human being has experienced some type of and some degree of pain during his or her life span. Roughly one third to one half of the whole population has suffered from chronic pain. During the recent past the approach towards management of chronic pain has dramatically changed. The opioid epidemic created alarm in the developed countries, and forced the clinicians to seek new pharmaceutical agents with less side effects and less potential for abuse. The interventional pain management developed itself as an advanced branch of the pain management, thanks to the development of new and better technologies, e.g., radiological imaging including ultrasound use as well as fluoroscopic and even CT and MRI use for guided neural interventions. COVID-19 forced us initially to cease all interventions, only after a few months to modify patient selection and our routine management protocols. This editorial offers a glimpse of this transformation to ‘the new normal’.

Key words: Pain; Pain management; Opioids; COVID-19

Citation: A.B. Akhtar AB, Durrani RS, Ghafoor AR. The new normal – pain control in COVID era (Editorial). Anaesth. pain intensive care 2020;24(4):373-376.

Received: 26 July 2020, Reviewed: 5 August 2020, Accepted: 9 August 2020