Postoperative pain combating and evaluation of patient's satisfaction from analgesic treatment

Pain is an inherent element of human life and one of the most unpleasant and unwanted experiences, causing fear, anxiety, or even anger. Pain is one of the strongest and most annoying experiences with a clear subjective character indicating risk to an organism or personality, or expressing its damage. Despite the intense development of medicine and modern surgical methods, surgery is still dealing with the huge problem of pain and its proper control. Effective combating of postoperative pain is currently a priority of modern surgical treatment, since it not only minimizes the patient's suffering, but also improves the quality of his/her life, decreases the number of complications, shortens the hospital stay, and at the same time decreases the costs of treatment.

The purpose of the presented study is analysis of the frequency of occurrence, intensity of postoperative pain and evaluation of patients' satisfaction with analgesic treatment.

The research included 100 patients from the Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, 54% of women and 46% of men, 38% of whom were urban inhabitants and 62% rural inhabitants of the Podkarpackie voivodeship in south-east Poland. The research method used in was a diagnostic survey, analysis of documentation and pain measurement with numerical and visual analogue scales.

Pain occurred from 12 - 24 hours before the procedure in the case of 20% of the patients, whereas 48% of the respondents complained about pain more than 1 day before the procedure. Pain before the procedure was a partial difficulty in self-care and physical activity for 26% of the subjects. The biggest amount of patients (30%) were afraid of postoperative complications. In the first day after the procedure, as much as 84% of the respondents complained about pain, on the second day the pain was felt by 74% of the patients, and on the third day by 57% of the respondents. Pain intensity, which was moderate in accordance with the VAS scale, was signalized by 35% of patients, strong pain was reported by 60% of the patients, and 5% of men evaluated the pain as very strong.

Postoperative pain was only a partial difficulty for the majority of patients, administration of a painkiller brought relief to the majority of patients, who had been afraid of the surgical procedure because of postoperative complications, not postoperative pain.