Pain Management from Basics to Clinical Practice

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The editor of Pain Management from Basics to Clinical Practice notes in his preface that education about pain ought to commence at undergraduate level, but that inadequate attention has been paid to this area of teaching. The editor indicates that the aims of the book are to introduce the concepts of pain from a basic scientific perspective and to develop it into the biopsychosocial model that is modern pain management. The aims of this book are therefore quite wide in terms of readership as it encompasses undergraduate students and also postgraduate students who are delving deeper into the area of pain management. The book is a well-laid-out paperback with some 300 pages, including the index. The text is divided into three sections of 19 chapters and addresses the issues of pain physiology, pharmacology, and management. After the introduction and chapters on the physiology of pain, there is a section on methods on the relief of pain, and a third section that seems to examine pain as a clinical entity and discusses the epidemiology, psychological, and management of pain. The physiology sections are very well presented and deliver a considerable amount of detail to the reader. These sections included neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology, peripheral mechanisms, and central mechanisms. I have no doubt that a reader would gain considerably in terms of their understanding of pain from these chapters. The methods described for the relief of pain include non-pharmacological interventions, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and acetaminophen, local anaesthetics, opioids and adjuvant, and other drugs used in pain management. The final chapter in that section seems to be a bridge into the general management of pain and is entitled ‘peripheral interventions’. The last section includes chapters on pain as a clinical entity, epidemiology of pain, assessment, the psychological impact of chronic pain, interventions in pain management, management strategies, and pain ethics and research. Once more, the authors have provided the readership with quite detailed information at times, which will be of considerable benefit to those managing patients in pain. The editor has done well to involve so many authors in this book, and it is clear that a good editorial policy has been applied to attain some uniformity from chapter to chapter. Inevitably, some chapters are longer and more detailed than others, but overall each chapter can be read within itself to good effect for the reader. There is a very useful list of abbreviations and one of definitions at the beginning of the book, each chapter includes highlighted tables and key points for the reader to follow, and the diagrams within the book are very good enhancing the reader’s understanding of the matters dealt with, and key points at the end of each chapter reinforce the learning objectives. I believe that undergraduate students would find this book useful as a reference text, and that trainees, from whatever background, would find this a very good working resource if they were following a training system in pain medicine. I am sure that many trainees in anaesthesia, especially those specializing in pain medicine, will use this text.