What kinds of pain will I feel after surgery?
You may be surprised where you feel pain after surgery. The surgery site is often not the only area of discomfort. You may or may not feel the following:
• Muscle pain: You may feel muscle pain in the neck, shoulders, back or chest from lying on the operating table.
• Throat pain: Your throat may feel sore or scratchy.
• Movement pain: Sitting up, walking, and coughing are all important activities after surgery, but they may cause increased pain at or around the incision site.
What are the types of pain-control treatments?
You may receive more than one type of pain treatment, depending on your needs and the type of surgery you are having.
Intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (PCA)
Patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) is a computerized pump that safely permits you to push a button and deliver small amounts of pain medicine into your intravenous (IV) line, usually in your arm.
The PCA pump is programmed to give a certain amount of medication when you press the button. It will only allow you to have so much medication, no matter how often you press the button, so there is little worry that you will give yourself too much.
Patient-controlled epidural analgesia
Many people are familiar with epidural anesthesia because it is frequently used to control pain during childbirth. Patient-controlled epidural analgesia uses a PCA pump to deliver pain-control medicine into an epidural catheter (a very thin plastic tube) that is placed into your back.
Nerve blocks
You may be offered a nerve block to control your pain after surgery. Unlike an epidural, which controls pain over a broad area of your body, a nerve block controls pain isolated to a smaller area of your body, such as an arm or leg. Sometimes a catheter similar to an epidural catheter is placed for prolonged pain control. One advantage of using a nerve block is that it may allow the amount of opioid (narcotic) medication to be significantly reduced. This may result in fewer side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, itching, and drowsiness.
Oral Medications
At some point during your recovery from surgery, your doctor will order pain medications to be taken by mouth (oral pain medications). The types of medications are:
Opioids (narcotics) after surgery: medications such as morphine, fentanyl, hydromorphone
Opioids (narcotics) at home (Percocet®, Vicodin® and others)
Non-opioid (non-narcotic) analgesics (Tylenol® and other non-NSAIDS)
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) ibuprofen (Advil® and Motrin®), naproxen sodium (Aleve®), celecoxib (Celebrex®) and others
