POSTTHORACOTOMY PAIN AND NURSE’S ROLE ON THE USE OF ANALGESIA METHODS

Thoracotomy is among the most painful prosedures of surgery and maycause severe postoperative pain. this pain persists in 21-67% of thepatients that undergoing thoracotomy and causes lots of postoperativecomplications. the results of post-operative pain undertreatment includeincreased morbidity and mortality, mostly due to respiratory andthromboembolic complications, and development of chronic pain. effectivepain management is very important for the patients who undergothoracotomy. the aim of pain management is preventing on seriouscomplications of uncontrolled postoperative complications andpostthoracotomy pain. there is not a single source of postthoracotomy pain,thus, pain control must be provide at each level. in this connection,multimodal analgesia including pharmacologic and nonpharmacologictehniniques be prefered in posttohoracotomy pain management. there aremany approaches for postthoracotomy analgesia and a multimodal approachis probably the most effective. in multimodal analgesia pharmacological andnonpharmacological techiniques are used together for thoracotomy patients.thus, in multimodal analgesia regimen for postoperative pain, reduces theamount of analgesic consumption and with minimal drug side effects.opioids, and non steroidal antiinflamatory drugs are used for thepharmacological analgesia. cognitive behavioral techiniques and periferaltechiniques are among the non pharmacological analgesia techiniques.nonpharmacologic techiniques provides pain control with reduced analgesicrelatedside effects. nurses which have pivotal roles in postoperative painmanagement must use nonpharmacological techiniques with analgesics foreffective pain relief with minimized analgesic consumption.