What are the specific goals of postoperative pain management after total knee arthroplasty?
The goals extend beyond simply improving patient comfort and satisfaction. It is essential to enable patients to ambulate and move their joints soon after surgery and, where appropriate, to shorten the length of stay, in many cases allowing patients to be discharged within 1 or 2 days. For balanced multimodal analgesia an effective preoperative regimen may include COX2 inhibitor (celecoxib), acetaminophen, gabapentinoids, regional analgesia, and opioids. Perioperative intraarticular injections have been shown to be an effective alternative to femoral nerve blockade.
