Every day thousands of operations are performed in Germany. The spectrum ranges from the smallest procedures, such as the removal of skin warts, to major surgical procedures lasting several hours. After each of these operations, pain can occur in the operated body region. These pains, which are causally preceded by an operation, are called postoperative pain.
What pain is normal after surgery?
Hardly any other area of medicine depends so much on subjective perception as pain therapy. The perception of pain is individual, i.e. each person has his or her own threshold above which a sensation is described as painful and to which he or she relates the intensity of pain. An objective assessment and definition of what is “normal” after surgery is therefore relatively difficult in the field of pain medicine.
A frequently used tool, especially to be able to follow the development of pain in the days after an operation, is the numerical ranking scale. Here the patient is asked to rate his pain with a score between 0 and 10, where 0 represents no pain and 10 represents the worst imaginable pain. Of course, we always try to keep the pain as low as possible.
On the scale this corresponds to a score below 3, which still represents a moderate pain intensity. Besides the intensity of the pain, the character of the pain plays a very important role, as it can provide information about the cause of the pain. After an operation, it is mainly the so-called nociceptive pain that occurs.
This describes the typical wound pain. It is easily localized, rather sharp and intensifies with certain movements or touching the wound. Depending on the operation, neuropathic pain may also occur.
These arise as a result of a nerve injury. In contrast to wound pain, the characteristic of pain is burning, is often felt as suddenly shooting and can be accompanied by reduced or disturbed sensation. Because of these different characteristics, it is helpful if the pain is accurately described to the treating physician. The doctor is then also able to assess which pain is to be expected after the respective operation and which is a warning sign.
