Refinements in laboratory animal anaesthesia and pain management have significantly improved welfare for research animals. Understanding current best practices and remaining gaps helps advocates and scientists advance the 3Rs framework.
Despite regulatory improvements, pain management in laboratory animals remains an area with significant variation in practice. Anaesthetic and analgesic decisions are often based on convention or convenience rather than best available evidence. The reluctance to administer analgesics due to concerns about confounding experimental results is increasingly recognised as ethically inadequate and scientifically poor - stressed, painful animals are not representative controls, and their pain responses confound rather than control for experimental variables. The 3Rs framework's Refinement principle requires active improvement of pain management protocols, not merely avoidance of obviously inadequate practice. Non-invasive monitoring tools like grimace scales represent significant practical advances that can be implemented immediately.