8th January 2024

Incident pain

Some pains are related to predictable events. Periods of expected activity, such as shopping, may be associated with pain at home. In the healthcare setting, patients may find receiving personal care painful. This is referred to as ‘incident pain.’ This may be controlled with lifestyle modifications, but immediate-release opioids are also useful for patients who can use this in anticipation of an incident. Increasing the background dose of opioids may not prevent episodes of incident pain, and the use of immediate-release opioids for these pains should not necessarily be used as a guide to increase background dose.