The advent of patient-controlled analgesia for post-operative analgesia
The landmark paper discussed in this chapter is ‘Patient-controlled analgesia: A new concept of postoperative pain relief’, published by Bennett et al. in 1982. This paper presents data from two investigations in which patient-controlled analgesia using morphine was evaluated in patients who had undergone elective gastric bypass surgery for the management of morbid obesity. The paper shows that patient-controlled analgesia achieved adequate analgesia more often than conventional intermittent analgesia did when both administration methods were compared, but with less sedation. In addition, patients who had experienced both methods of analgesia felt that patient-controlled analgesia was superior. The paper also demonstrates that individuals can vary in their analgesic requirements.