Perioperative Pain Management in Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Narrative Review of Current Multimodal Analgesia Protocols
Simone Franzoni, Stefano Marco Paolo Rossi, Angela Cassinadri, Rudy Sangaletti, Francesco Benazzo
Abstract
Since there is no consensus on the optimal perioperative analgesic method, the present article provides a brief and practical synthesis on current multimodal pre–postsurgery analgesia protocols for primary TKA (excluding intraoperative anesthetic techniques) reported especially in recent meta-analyses and reviews. The focus is not only on the traditional aims (pain scores and opioid sparing), but also the functional recovery and patient-reported outcomes. Multimodal analgesia (pre-emptive analgesia, local infiltration analgesia, peripheral nerve blocks, and specific systemic drugs) is considered the optimal regimen for perioperative pain management of TKA.