EFFICACY OF MULTIMODAL ANALGESIA IN POSTOPERATIVE PAIN MANAGEMENT: A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL

Abstract

The issue of postoperative pain is still one of the primary clinical problems, and it usually prolongs the recovery time, exposes patients to more opioids, and affects patient outcomes. This is a randomized controlled trial that assessed the effectiveness of multimodal analgesia versus conventional opioid-based postoperative pain management as a mixed-method study that used quantitative measures of analgesia and qualitative patient-reported recovery experiences. Adult postoperative patients undergoing elective abdominal and orthopedic surgery were randomly divided into two groups: conventional opioid-centered analgesia and multimodal regimen of non-opioid analgesics and regional techniques of anesthesia and adjunctive pharmacologic agents. The validated scales used to assess the level of pain (Visual Analog Scale, VAS, and Numerical Rating Scale, NRS) were applied, and opioid intake was translated to morphine milligram equivalents to work out opioid-sparing effects. Secondary outcomes comprised the parameters of physiological stability, score of sedation, adverse drug reactions, initial ambulation potential and feedback of subjective recovery through structured interviews. Findings showed that multimodal analgesia produced far fewer pain scores, lesser opioid needs, enhanced physiological stability and diminished adverse events. The qualitative results also demonstrated an increase in the level of patient comfort and increased mobility, increased sleep quality, and other satisfaction levels among the multimodal recipients. The combined review revealed that the efficacy of multimodal analgesia is more effective as it can activate many pain pathways at the same time, which helps the patient get well sooner and reduce the incidence of opioid-related side effects. These results confirm the wider clinical implementation of multimodal analgesia as a safer and more efficient standard of handling postoperative pain and the need to have procedure-specific analgesic protocols applied to individual patients to achieve optimal patient outcomes