Pharmacological options for intra-operative and early postoperative analgesia: an update.

The motto of the 2011 Global Year Against Acute Pain was 'Anticipate, Assess, Alleviate'. Recent advances in acute pain management include novel applications of widely used drugs, new techniques, as well as further development in our knowledge of pain scoring in veterinary patients. The concept of preventive analgesia is introduced here and serves to strengthen the widely accepted practice of pre-emptive, multimodal analgesia.