6.4 Pain and Mobility Medications Overview

The next sections will introduce different classes of analgesics and musculoskeletal medications with specific administration considerations, therapeutic effects, adverse/side effects, and teaching needed for each class of medications.

Analgesics used to treat pain are categorized as non-opioid, opioid, and adjuvant medications.

• Non-opioid medications include acetaminophen and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
• Opioid medications include natural, semi-synthetic, and synthetic drugs both prescription and non-prescription illicit drugs.
• Adjuvant analgesics are defined as drugs with a primary indication other than pain that have analgesic properties in some painful conditions. This group includes numerous drugs in diverse classes such as gabapentin (an anticonvulsant), amitriptyline (a tricyclic antidepressant), or muscle relaxants (Lussier et al, 2004).

Each of these classes will be discussed in more detail along with antigout and anesthetic medications.

To support your learning, you can access the Chapter 6 Comparing Opioid and Non-opioid Analgesic Medications table.   This is a downloadable and editable document to support medication comparison and note-taking.

References

Lussier, D., Huskey, A., & Portenoy, R. (2004).  Adjuvant analgesics in cancer pain management. Oncologist, 9(5); 571-91.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15477643. ↵