Addressing Pain Management Postoperatively from a Multimodal Approach in Response to the Opioid Epidemic

This review article explores the four-wave opioid epidemic across the United States and the postsurgical multimodal pain management approaches being implemented to help combat it. Breaking down the mechanistic approach to pain in the form of opioid-alternative analgesics, cryotherapeutic techniques, cognitive approaches, and more, this paper offers insight into how pain can be managed outside of the historical approach, while also exploring the future directions of the field as physicians and researchers alike search for ways to offer more comfort and quality of life to the patients who walk through their clinic doors.