Understanding the pathophysiology of perioperative pain

Managing perioperative pain effectively is one the most important tasks that clinical veterinarians perform on a daily basis. The purpose of this article is to provide veterinarians with a basic understanding of the pathophysiology of perioperative pain and a working knowledge of the principles of effective therapy. First, the concepts of nociception, inflammatory pain, and neural plasticity are introduced. Second, the nociceptive and antinociceptive pathways that mediate normal physiological pain are described. Next, neural plasticity and the development of pathological pain are explained. And last, the concepts of preemptive, multimodal, and mechanism-based therapy are discussed.