Association Between Multimodal Analgesia, Post Pain Scores in Elective Cardiac Surgery

Background: Enhanced recovery after cardiac surgery protocols have been widely adopted with the promise of improving perioperative outcomes, reducing opioid exposure, and accelerating postoperative recovery. A central feature of these pathways is multimodal analgesia, defined as the use of multiple analgesic agents that act on different receptors. Despite its widespread endorsement and inclusion as a quality metric by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, direct evidence supporting its effectiveness in cardiac surgery remains limited and sometimes conflicting. Objective: To determine whether use of multimodal analgesia was associated with lower maximum postoperative pain scores on postoperative day 3 (POD3) in adults undergoing elective cardiac surgery, and to explore whether multimodal analgesia was linked to improved recovery outcomes. Design: Multicenter, retrospective, observational cohort study. Methods: Data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery more...