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Resetting the Bar for Acute Perioperative Pain Management

Despite previously published guidelines and practice recommendations, there remains unwarranted variation in the quality of pain management provided to patients having surgery. Unwarranted variations in healthcare are inconsistencies in clinical practice that have no basis in science or patient preference.

In 2019, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force published its report, which called on medical societies to work together to develop evidence-based guidelines to improve the quality of pain care delivery. The Task Force, which was Chaired by Stanford anesthesiology and pain medicine specialist Dr. Vanila Singh when she was Chief Medical Officer of HSS, recommended individualized, multimodal, and multidisciplinary approaches to pain management to help decrease an over-reliance on opioids, increase access to care, and promote widespread education on pain and substance use disorders.

Following the release of this Task Force report, leaders of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) decided to take action and launched a 2-year project. As Chair of the ASA Committee on Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, I participated as a member of the steering committee and served as Co-Chair of the Pain Summit. ASA invited 13 other medical societies to join a new consortium dedicated to improving pain management (in alphabetical order):

  • American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons
  • American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
  • American Association of Neurological Surgeons
  • American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
  • American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
  • American College of Surgeons
  • American Hospital Association
  • American Medical Association
  • American Society of Breast Surgeons
  • American Society of Plastic Surgeons
  • American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
  • American Urological Association
  • Society of Thoracic Surgeons

For its first initiative, the consortium agreed to focus on the pain care of the routine, non-complex (i.e., opioid-naïve) adult surgical patient. Over the course of several months, using Delphi methodology and culminating in the first live virtual Pain Summit involving all participating societies, this multiorganizational consensus process resulted in the establishment of 7 guiding principles for acute perioperative pain management.

Now published in Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine, these principles are intended to help healthcare systems and individual clinicians provide better care for patients having surgery. These principles include the need for preoperative evaluation of medical and psychological conditions and potential substance use disorders, a focus on multimodal analgesia including nonpharmacologic interventions, use of validated pain assessment tools to guide and adjust treatment, and the importance of individualized care and education, among others.

The final seven principles are:

  1. Clinicians should conduct a preoperative evaluation including assessment of medical and psychological conditions, concomitant medications, history of chronic pain, substance use disorder, and previous postoperative treatment regimens and responses, to guide the perioperative pain management plan.
  2. Clinicians should use a validated pain assessment tool to track responses to postoperative pain treatments and adjust treatment plans accordingly.
  3. Clinicians should offer multimodal analgesia, or the use of a variety of analgesic medications and techniques combined with nonpharmacological interventions, for the treatment of postoperative pain in adults.
  4. Clinicians should provide patient and family-centered, individually tailored education to the patient (and/or responsible caregiver), including information on treatment options for managing postoperative pain, and document the plan and goals for postoperative pain management.
  5. Clinicians should provide education to all patients (adult) and primary caregivers on the pain treatment plan, including proper storage and disposal of opioids and tapering of analgesics after hospital discharge.
  6. Clinicians should adjust the pain management plan based on adequacy of pain relief and presence of adverse events.
  7. Clinicians should have access to consultation with a pain specialist for patients who have inadequately controlled postoperative pain or are at high risk of inadequately controlled postoperative pain at their facilities (e.g., long-term opioid therapy, history of substance use disorder).

The formation of this consortium is a critical first step to widespread quality improvement in perioperative pain management for surgical patients across the country. The fact that 14 professional healthcare organizations could agree on these 7 principles means that the bar for acute perioperative pain management has been reset.

The work product of this consortium can now form the basis of all future guidelines and influence the products of legislation and regulation that affect pain management for surgical patients. There is still so much work to do, however, and this consortium is already looking at how to tailor these principles to more complex surgical populations, better assess barriers to change implementation, and provide each organization’s members with the tools they need to improve acute perioperative pain management where they are.

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Pain Medicine, Perioperative Surgical Home, and the Patient Experience

VAPAHealthcare around the world is changing. In the United States, healthcare reform has been focused on achieving the “triple aim” as described by Berwick (1). This triple aim encompasses 3 goals: improving the patient experience, reducing costs of care, and improving population health. The Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) is a conceptual model introduced by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) in the past 5 years that may serve as an integrator to help hospitals achieve the triple aim (2). PSH is defined as “a patient-centered, physician anesthesiologist-led, multidisciplinary team-based practice model that coordinates surgical patient care throughout the continuum from the decision to pursue surgery through convalescence” (3). In reality, a PSH can take many forms, and the concept is analogous to the “Perioperative Medicine: the Pathway to Better Surgical Care” initiative by the Royal College of Anaesthetists in the United Kingdom. To date, there have been few published descriptions of actual PSH programs.

Role of Pain Medicine in the PSH

Pain medicine is woven throughout the three main elements of the PSH: preoperative preparation, intraoperative care, and postoperative recovery and rehabilitation (4). Preoperatively, anesthesiologists and pain medicine specialists have an opportunity to influence patient care by identifying patients who are considered high risk for surgery and tailor an individualized preoperative preparation plan for them. For example, the patient with chronic pain treated with long-acting opioids may benefit from optimizing the preoperative analgesic medication regimen, even tapering the opioid dose, or prescribing cognitive, behavioral, or physical therapy prior to elective major surgery like lower extremity joint replacement. During the intraoperative period, anesthetic protocols provide consistent care for surgical patients, and implementing clinical pathways that include regional anesthesia techniques have been shown to decrease perioperative opioid use and improve outcomes. For patients who have surgery, pain has a profound influence on the hospital experience. In the United States, the patient experience of care is one of three domains that influence hospital incentive payment amounts from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Patient experience is assessed using a survey, and 7 of 32 questions directly or indirectly relate to pain management (5). After the immediate postoperative period, integrated pain management can help patients achieve physical therapy goals and facilitate the transition to after-hospital rehabilitation. For challenging patients with chronic pain, this process may require careful coordination between the in-hospital anesthesiologist, outpatient pain clinic physician, and primary care physician (4).

Thinking Beyond Pain

The practice of anesthesiology in the United States is evolving, and there is a greater emphasis on demonstrating value. Anesthesiologists have historically been successful in establishing perioperative clinical pathways that improve acute pain management especially in orthopedic surgery, and setting up regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine programs has played a key role (6). However, competing priorities require revision of clinical pathways from time to time. For example, concerns regarding quadriceps muscle weakness with femoral nerve blocks (7) and the potential for falls (8) have led to innovations in selective nerve block techniques for knee replacement patients (9) and greater achievements in functional rehabilitation (10). By establishing a PSH model, anesthesiologists have greater opportunity but also greater responsibility for reducing perioperative complications that may or may not typically be considered within the realm of anesthesiology (11).

Future Directions

physical_med_rehab_indexTo date, anesthetic interventions focused on targeting acute pain have not demonstrated long-term functional benefits (12,13). Perhaps implementation of a PSH with better care coordination that includes individualized preoperative preparation and follow-up after surgery during rehabilitation will have greater potential for positive long-term outcomes. In addition to improvements in functional outcomes, a PSH may be able to provide patients a smoother transition from hospital to home in terms of pain management and decrease the incidence of chronic pain after common elective procedures like joint replacement (14). Finally, more health economic research is needed to prove the financial benefits of a PSH in terms of cost savings for hospitals.

In summary, the PSH is a model that can be applied many ways to provide coordinated care of the surgical patient from the decision to proceed with surgery through convalescence. Pain medicine plays an integral role in any PSH implementation. However, to be effective, anesthesiologists as leaders of the PSH need to target improvement strategies beyond pain outcomes and the immediate postoperative period.

References

  1. Berwick DM, Nolan TW, Whittington J: The triple aim: care, health, and cost. Health Aff (Millwood) 2008; 27: 759-69
  2. Vetter TR, Boudreaux AM, Jones KA, Hunter JM, Jr., Pittet JF: The perioperative surgical home: how anesthesiology can collaboratively achieve and leverage the triple aim in health care. Anesth Analg 2014; 118: 1131-6
  3. Mariano ER, Walters TL, Kim TE, Kain ZN: Why the perioperative surgical home makes sense for veterans affairs health care. Anesth Analg 2015; 120: 1163-6
  4. Walters TL, Mariano ER, Clark JD: Perioperative Surgical Home and the Integral Role of Pain Medicine. Pain Med 2015; 16: 1666-72
  5. Mariano ER, Miller B, Salinas FV: The expanding role of multimodal analgesia in acute perioperative pain management. Adv Anesth 2013; 31: 119-136
  6. Mariano ER: Making it work: setting up a regional anesthesia program that provides value. Anesthesiol Clin 2008; 26: 681-92, vi
  7. Charous MT, Madison SJ, Suresh PJ, Sandhu NS, Loland VJ, Mariano ER, Donohue MC, Dutton PH, Ferguson EJ, Ilfeld BM: Continuous femoral nerve blocks: varying local anesthetic delivery method (bolus versus basal) to minimize quadriceps motor block while maintaining sensory block. Anesthesiology 2011; 115: 774-81
  8. Feibel RJ, Dervin GF, Kim PR, Beaule PE: Major complications associated with femoral nerve catheters for knee arthroplasty: a word of caution. J Arthroplasty 2009; 24: 132-7
  9. Lund J, Jenstrup MT, Jaeger P, Sorensen AM, Dahl JB: Continuous adductor-canal-blockade for adjuvant post-operative analgesia after major knee surgery: preliminary results. Acta Anaesthesiol Scand 2011; 55: 14-9
  10. Mudumbai SC, Kim TE, Howard SK, Workman JJ, Giori N, Woolson S, Ganaway T, King R, Mariano ER: Continuous adductor canal blocks are superior to continuous femoral nerve blocks in promoting early ambulation after TKA. Clin Orthop Relat Res 2014; 472: 1377-83
  11. Kim TE, Mariano ER: Developing a Multidisciplinary Fall Reduction Program for Lower-Extremity Joint Arthroplasty Patients. Anesthesiol Clin 2014; 32: 853-864
  12. Ilfeld BM, Ball ST, Gearen PF, Mariano ER, Le LT, Vandenborne K, Duncan PW, Sessler DI, Enneking FK, Shuster JJ, Maldonado RC, Meyer RS: Health-related quality of life after hip arthroplasty with and without an extended-duration continuous posterior lumbar plexus nerve block: a prospective, 1-year follow-up of a randomized, triple-masked, placebo-controlled study. Anesth Analg 2009; 109: 586-91
  13. Ilfeld BM, Shuster JJ, Theriaque DW, Mariano ER, Girard PJ, Loland VJ, Meyer S, Donovan JF, Pugh GA, Le LT, Sessler DI, Ball ST: Long-term pain, stiffness, and functional disability after total knee arthroplasty with and without an extended ambulatory continuous femoral nerve block: a prospective, 1-year follow-up of a multicenter, randomized, triple-masked, placebo-controlled trial. Reg Anesth Pain Med 2011; 36: 116-20
  14. Lavand’homme PM, Grosu I, France MN, Thienpont E: Pain trajectories identify patients at risk of persistent pain after knee arthroplasty: an observational study. Clin Orthop Relat Res 2014; 472: 1409-15

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