Using multimodal analgesic plans to manage pain

Kyle Bartholomew, DVM, DACVAA, clinical assistant professor of veterinary anesthesia, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, discusses how multimodal analgesic plans can benefit patients experiencing pain, in a dvm360 interview at the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC) SkillShop in Orlando, Florida. Bartholomew recently served as an instructor for the “Small Animal Anesthesia for the Practice Team” course at the continuing education event. He presented lectures and provided lab instruction with colleagues over 4 days, including a session on balanced anesthesia and analgesia.

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The following is a transcript of the video:

Kyle Bartholomew, DVM, DACVAA: Multimodal analgesic plans can benefit patients by combining multiple analgesics or one painful condition. The reason we use multimodal analgesia is because pain is incredibly complicated, so each patient can benefit from attacking it via different pathways with different analgesics. Also, the analgesics we use often have some side effects. People think of ileus or nausea, GI upset with opioids, those will also increase the higher the dose goes. So we use multiple analgesics combined together to help reduce the negative side effects that patients can experience with high doses of each individual analgesic.

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