Advanced perioperative pain management in cats now incorporates local anesthetic techniques, novel analgesics, and multimodal protocols that dramatically reduce post-operative pain burden.
Advanced perioperative pain management in cats represents one of the most significant quality-of-life improvements in veterinary medicine of the past decade. The shift from treating pain reactively to preventing its establishment through pre-emptive and intraoperative multimodal analgesia has dramatically reduced post-operative suffering in feline surgical patients. Local anesthetic techniques that block pain at source reduce the opioid doses needed, minimizing opioid-related side effects including nausea and dysphoria that themselves compromise welfare. The challenge is ensuring that best-practice protocols developed in academic settings are consistently implemented in general practice, where resource and training constraints may create barriers to adoption.