This means giving simultaneous administration of 2 or more analgesic drugs (pain medications) affecting different parts of the pain pathway, simultaneously.
This is very helpful because it allows us to treat the pain more completely and effectively and sometimes even decrease drug dosages because various classes of drugs have additive or synergistic analgesic effects when given together. As a result, adverse side effects from each of the drugs in the combination can be anticipated to be less.
Different ways to administer these drugs also can be included in multimodal analgesia (pain relief), these can include (but are not limited to) intravenous (into a vein) medications, epidural medications (around the spinal cord/nerves) and local blocks (giving medication at the site of the injury or to the nerves that go to that site).
Other methods of pain control can also add to the multimodal definition. These can include physical rehabilitation, massage, as well as diet.
When our patients pain is treated more completely we can see fewer complications as well as faster recoveries!