Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 3/2008

Advances in pharmacotherapy of pain

The paper draws attention to possibilities for improvements in pharmacotherapy of pain by making the best of guidelines and recommendations for treatment of pain elaborated in the Czech Republic and abroad in the last few years. There are given comments and links to several guidelines available in full length in the Internet: guidelines for pharmacotherapy of acute pain, chronic non-cancer pain, cancer pain, headache, post-operation pain, recommendations of EULAR for management of osteoarthritis and EFNS guidelines on pharmacological treatment of neuropathic pain. New analgesics introduced in the Czech Republic recently are briefly mentioned. The second part of the article deals with risks of pharmacotherapy of pain with respect to resent findings on risks in the treatment with nonsteroid antiinflammatory drugs, opioids, paracetamol and dipyrone. There are given links to the statement of American Heart Association on use of nonsteroid antiinflammatory drugs and to some documents of IASP on efects and use of opioid analgesics.

Keywords: pharmacotherapy of pain, guidelines, recommendations, analgesics, adverse reactions.