Pain Management in the Emergency Department: a Review Article on Options and Methods

CONTEXT: The aim of this review is to recognizing different methods of analgesia for emergency medicine physicians (EMPs) allows them to have various pain relief methods to reduce pain and to be able to use it according to the patient’s condition and to improve the quality of their services. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: In this review article, the search engines and scientific databases of Google Scholar, Science Direct, PubMed, Medline, Scopus, and Cochrane for emergency pain management methods were reviewed. Among the findings, high quality articles were eventually selected from 2000 to 2018, and after reviewing them, we have conducted a comprehensive comparison of the usual methods of pain control in the emergency department (ED). RESULTS: For better understanding, the results are reported in to separate subheadings including “Parenteral agents” and “Regional blocks”. Non-opioids analgesics such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and acetaminophen are commonly used in the treatment of acute pain. However, the relief of acute moderate to severe pain usually requires opioid agents. Considering the side effects of systemic drugs and the restrictions on the use of analgesics, especially opioids, regional blocks of pain as part of a multimodal analgesic strategy can be helpful. CONCLUSION: This study was designed to investigate and identify the disadvantages and advantages of using each drug to be able to make the right choices in different clinical situations for patients while paying attention to the limitations of the use of these analgesic drugs.