Chronic Pain ‐ A Surgeon's Viewpoint

For the surgeon, there are three broad categories of chronic or continuing pain, namely post‐operative pain, surgically remediable pain and surgically unremediable pain. In the post‐operative situation, narcotics are used routinely and practice has changed little over many years. Surgically remediable pain is most often acute but is sometimes chronic, as in the case of pain caused by cancer of the pancreas where surgery is for palliation rather than cure. In the case of surgically unremediable pain, the patients have usually had surgical treatment for a cancer which then recurs. Such patients nowadays are nearly always managed in consultation with oncologists /pain specialists.