[Quality of postoperative pain therapy in Austria: national survey of all departments of anesthesiology].

BACKGROUND: Despite increasingly sophisticated concepts of perioperative pain therapy, such as increased use of combined regional anesthesia techniques, the renaissance of ketamine and dipyrone or the use of oral opioids, no significant improvement has been achieved in postoperative pain therapy since 1995. About 300,000 of the approximately 700,000 patients undergoing major surgery each year in Austria experience moderate to severe postoperative pain. The aim of this study was therefore to assess the nationwide status of perioperative acute pain management in postoperative recovery rooms and surgical wards in order to identify potential areas for improvement.

METHODS: In 2006 the directors of all Austrian anesthesiology departments (n=125, 100%) were contacted and asked to give detailed information on the status of acute pain management of each individual hospital in Austria using a standardized questionnaire. Data of each individual department were derived from quality control and self-assessment of each department. No patients were questioned. The return rate was 96% (n=120) due to intensive personal contact in cases of missing data.

RESULTS: In this nationwide survey 120 anesthesiology departments participated together accounting for a total of 757,895 operations per year. Of the patients 63.6% were informed preoperatively on the available regimens of acute pain management. In 81% of patients perioperative pain therapy consisted of a multimodal therapeutic approach, 58.6% of the departments used international guidelines and 39.7% worked with international guidelines adapted to local requirements. In 88% of patients a detailed prescription for postoperative pain therapy was available when transferred to the surgical ward. Surgical wards were equipped with routine pain therapy protocols in 28% another 20% of wards had special pain therapy protocols for individual operations. In 22% of cases pain assessment was repeated 3-4 times per day and in 33.9% postoperative pain was assessed only once twice per day. Pain assessments were recorded in the patient charts in 60.7% of cases. If changes to the pain therapy regimen were required anesthesiologists were involved in only 14.3% of cases. In addition an acute pain service was available only in 39.2% of Austrian anesthesiology departments.

CONCLUSIONS: Although the multimodal approach to acute pain therapy is widely used and standardized therapeutic regimens are well established in the majority of anesthesiology and surgical wards, there still remains room for improvement. Pain assessment is generally barely adequate and written documentation of pain assessment is missing almost completely. In addition, almost two thirds of hospitals in Austria are still lacking an acute pain service.