Pain Management

Pain management wasn’t an issue for many pet owners. They didn’t have a clear understanding of how animals experienced pain, and few drugs were available that could help. Managing pain in animals has always been a challenge because cats and dogs can’t say where or how much it hurts. Beyond that communication gap, animals especially cats often try to hide their pain, an instinctive behavior dictated by the premise that the weak don’t survive.

In the past 10 years, however, veterinarians have focused on pain relief for pets, and managing pain in companion animals will be one of the two or three defining issues of veterinary medicine in the first half of the 21st century. What changed? Part of the answer lies in increased demand by pet owners. Owner concern, plus their own interest in animals, led anesthesiologists, surgeons and intensive-care veterinarians to look more closely at animals in pain and try to do a better job of recognizing and treating it. Dogs and cats have been the main beneficiaries of this interest. 

The treatment includes a morphine derivative that’s usually injected. What’s new is the idea of placing it in a medication syringe and applying it to the gums. This makes it easy for owners to give it at home as needed, a relief for people with cats, which are often reluctant if not downright unwilling to swallow pills or liquids. What’s also different is using this type of drug with a cat. Veterinarians once believed that opioids such as morphine couldn’t be used in cats because they metabolized the drugs differently than dogs and humans.

Surgery is another common cause of pain in pets. Whether it’s a spay or a fracture repair, the aftermath of surgery is pain. Imagine not getting anything to relieve that pain. Now veterinarians can provide pain relief that starts before surgery and continues throughout recovery. New anesthesia techniques include using local anesthetics to block nerves to the area being operated on and combinations of drugs that can be put in IV fluids and continued postoperatively to give pain relief for hours or even days, if necessary.