Effect of regional anesthesia on pain sensitization after surgery: New concepts

Abstract

Severe postoperative pain and wound hyperalgesia, a clinical sign of central sensitization, are risk factors for the development of chronic postsurgical pain. This article describes the neuronal changes that surgical pain and possibly high opioid doses cause in the central nervous system. It also relates how regional anesthesia might oppose these changes and block both the pain sensitization and the pain chronification following surgery.