Abstract
Pain treatment is often a great challenge due to its complex pathophysiology and significantly different individual tolerance to individual analgesics and their dosage. For mild pain, it is recommended to start with nonopioid analgesics.
If these are insufficient for treatment or if the pain is moderate, it is advisable to add weak opioids to the treatment. For severe pain, we change weak opioids for strong ones.
New analgesics have been introduced over the last few years, but above all we can observe an attempt to maximise the potential of existing analgesics by using combinations of them. Combining drugs from different classes with complementary mechanisms of action provides a better possibility of effective analgesia at reduced doses of individual agents.
Fixed combinations with a set optimal ratio of agents provide the additional benefits of reduced drug side effects and simple dosing. As a result, the use of fixed combinations of tramadol and paracetamol or dexketoprofen is widely available.
Despite the abundance of analgesics, it is still not possible to satisfactorily manage pain in all patients.