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Pain Management

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Complex Head and Neck Microvascular Surgery

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Abstract

Patients who undergo head and neck cancer surgeries are faced with cosmetic, physiologic, and pain challenges, and adequate perioperative pain management is integral to patient care and quality of life. Further, inadequately controlled acute postsurgical pain puts patients at risk for chronic postsurgical pain and other sequelae including risk of chronic opioid use and substantial healthcare costs. Clinicians should utilize multimodal analgesia, defined as various therapies to mitigate pain in which these therapies act differently, and consider routes of medication administration as oral options are not always appropriate for these patients. Ensuring adequate analgesia decreases hospital length of stay, minimizes cardiac and pulmonary complications, and mitigates deconditioning, all of which decrease healthcare costs. Pain management plans tailored to each patient’s comorbidities and procedures along with clinicians’ thoughtful ability to maximize resources available at an institution allow for successful patient care and optimal outcomes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Joshua Isaac Reece & Nicole Z. Spence

  2. Department of Otolaryngology, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Heather A. Edwards

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  1. Joshua Isaac Reece
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  2. Heather A. Edwards
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  3. Nicole Z. Spence
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicole Z. Spence .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, Good Samaritan Hospital, AQ Surgery: Head and Neck, Microvascular Institute, West Palm Beach, FL, USA

    Anastasiya Quimby

  2. Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surg, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Sat Parmar

  3. College of Medicine, University of Florida, Jacksonville, FL, USA

    Rui Fernandes

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Reece, J.I., Edwards, H.A., Spence, N.Z. (2023). Pain Management. In: Quimby, A., Parmar, S., Fernandes, R. (eds) Complex Head and Neck Microvascular Surgery . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38898-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38898-9_13

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