Pain is described by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. Although acute pain cannot always be distinguished from chronic pain using time-based definitions, pain is considered chronic if it continues more than 90 days following surgery or injury.
Episodes of acute pain can progress to development of chronic pain in some patients which can seriously impact on a person’s quality of life, wellbeing and livelihood. Therefore, attempts to prevent the development of chronic pain has many benefits, both personal and economic. Chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) is defined by the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11) as “pain that develops or increases in intensity after a surgical procedure or a tissue injury and persists beyond the healing process, at least 3 months after the initiating event”. The prevalence of CPSP is high, with up to 23% in a large cohort of pain clinic patients in the UKreported surgery as the inciting event for their pain.1 There are numerous personal and medical predictive factors for CPSP. However poorly controlled acute postsurgical pain is a consistent risk factor in large scale observational studies.2
