Using multimodal analgesic plans to manage pain

During a dvm360 interview at the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC) SkillShop in Orlando, Florida, Kyle Bartholomew, DVM, DACVAA, clinical assistant professor of veterinary anesthesia at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, discusses how multimodal analgesic plans can benefit patients experiencing pain. 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 for 1 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 [adverse] effects. People think of ileus or nausea, [gastrointestinal] upset with opioids—those will also increase the higher the dose goes. So, we use multiple analgesics combined...to help reduce the negative [adverse] effects that patients can experience with high doses of each individual analgesic.

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