How Will I Manage the Pain?
- For ovarian cancer, postoperative pain management begins before the operation
- An epidural can be given continuously throughout the surgical process
- Your doctor may recommend taking over-the-counter pain meds like Tylenol or Motrin before the procedure to block pain signals on the front end
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However, an important thing to understand about the pain management process is that it’s helpful to begin it before you even go in for surgery.
“Postoperative pain control starts preoperatively,” Dr. Crispens says. “Many times you will received some preoperative medications, and that varies based on the patient and in individual practice.”
Preoperative pain management can include over-the-counter pain meds like Tylenol and Motrin. The goal is to block the pain signals on the front end, Dr. Crispens says, so that it becomes easier to manage pain after surgery.
Some patients will receive narcotics after surgery, however, in an effort to curb potential addiction issues down the road, Dr. Crispens says she and her colleagues are working towards offering additional ways to manage pain that avoid any dependency.
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“[We are] moving much more towards multi-modality pain control so that you would receive — in addition to narcotics — other medications,” she says. “And those can be a lot of different medications. They can include things like Motrin, Tylenol, Neurontin — which is good for nerve pain. Some patients do well with muscle relaxants.”
The type of pain medication needed will really depend on the patient’s individual disease, as will the recovery time after the operation. Recovery time tends to be the shortest for women who can have their cancer removed through minimally-invasive laparoscopic incisions. For surgeries that require a single, longer incision — called a laparotomy — the recovery time will be longer and women will likely experience more pain and more blood loss.
After a laparotomy, your doctors may follow a protocol called Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS), which refers to a carefully-timed series of transitions that can ease the body back into normal functions like eating and walking around. The goal is to get the patient up and moving, which will likely allow them to leave the hospital sooner rather than later. The pain management protocol can be adjusted as needed during this time.
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