Opioid-Reducing Pain Management in Adult Liver Transplant Recipients
Puneet Gupta*, Richard Fagbemigun, Rafaello Ibrado, Geet Paul, Anita Vincent, Eric R. Heinz
Department of Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine, George Washington University Hospital, Washington, DC, USA
*Correspondence: Puneet Gupta MD, Department of Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine, George Washington University Hospital, Washington, DC, USA. E-mail: Guptap14@gwu.edu
Received: April 10, 2024; Accepted: May 06, 2024; Published: May 14, 2024
Citation: Gupta P, Fagbemigun R, Ibrado R, Paul G, Vincent A, Heinz ER. Opioid-Reducing Pain Management in Adult Liver Transplant Recipients. J Clin Anesth Pract. 2024;2(1):05-12.
Copyright: © 2024 Gupta P. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
ABSTRACT
Liver transplants are surgically and medically challenging in the perioperative timeframe. Liver transplant recipients often have multiple systemic illnesses and comorbidities that contribute to this complexity. Pain management in the perioperative period is one particular area that is challenging but being increasingly explored. With a growing emphasis on early extubation and worse outcomes associated with poor pain control, there is a need to identify and better understand which opioid-reducing pain regimens provide the best analgesia in liver transplant recipients. This has stirred new research on regional nerve blocks and other non-opioid pain medication regimens. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide a concise, analytical review of the progress being made in applying regional anesthesia, alternative medicine, and other opioid reducing pain regimens to adult liver transplant recipients. Keywords: Liver recipient; Perioperative pain, Liver transplant; Regional anesthesia; Opioid-reducing.