Pain Emergencies and Complications of Pain Treatments

Abstract

Chapter 13 reviews some common pain-associated emergencies and also discusses some complications of pain treatments that require immediate attention. Pain is a common occurrence in emergent illness, and some complications of pain treatments require emergent management. Chest pain is an excellent example of clinical decision-making following a process of organized, rapid pain assessment and then diagnostic and treatment reasoning based on the findings and observations of the clinical assessment. Providers assessing patients for acute chest pain elicit basic pain characteristics of region, quality, severity, and timing as well as usually associated factors and then pursue testing and treatment for elements in the differential diagnosis accordingly. The chapter illustrates this same process applied to conditions of acute abdominal, limb, headache, and spine emergencies. In the second part of the chapter, emergencies arising in the context of pain treatments are discussed, including overdose and withdrawal from opioids, benzodiazepines, and other pain-active medications as well as pump and device complications.