Pain Management Strategies in Intensive Care Unit: Challenges and Best Practice

Pain management in the ICU (intensive care unit) is a very complex problem which involves a wide variety of conditions, lack of sufficient tools for use, and high personnel to patient ratio. In the last three decades, pain as a clinical issue has become well analyzed, and treatment protocols based on scientific evidence have been established. Besides medication, some non-pharmacological methods such as music therapy, relaxation, and massage have been proven to be very much practical and manageable in pain management of ICU. The main opioids are utilized predominantly due to their power but NSAIDs and local anesthesia are combined with opioids with the aim to reduce the pain as much as possible. Yet more research now has to prove that pain evaluation and management is effective. This article discusses on the issues and the best approaches to solving them when managing pain in ICU patients.