The wound healed three months after surgery but it still hurts? This is a disease!

On May 21, 2021, the 82nd patient education live broadcast of TopMD's "Let's Meet the Doctor" discussed the topic: Why does the wound still hurt after the surgery has healed?

For this live broadcast, we invited Professor Feng Yi, Director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine and Chief Physician of Peking University People's Hospital, to broadcast the live broadcast simultaneously on the homepages of 9 platforms in the TopMD all-media matrix: Sohu Health, Sohu Video, Sina News, Tencent News, Healthy China TV, Tencent Video, Toutiao, Xigua Video, and Baidu Health, with an online viewing volume of 1,012,426 times.

We have edited and re-broadcasted the issues that patients are most concerned about during this live broadcast. Today's episode (1) has been synchronized to the People's Daily client, Xinhuanet client, Toutiao, NetEase News, Sohu News, Tencent News, Science Popularization China, CCTV Video, iQiyi, and Qutoutiao.

Just had surgery? This episode tells you a truth that has been overlooked. You must watch it! 👇

Since the surgery is invasive, many people will experience postoperative pain after the surgery. However, the intensity of pain experienced by each person is different. Some people will experience mild pain, but some people’s pain will even affect their normal life.

Postoperative pain is divided into acute pain and chronic pain. Almost all patients after surgery will experience acute pain, which refers to the pain that occurs before the surgical wound heals. If the patient's wound heals after surgery, but the wound still hurts, this may be chronic pain.

The international community has long recognized that chronic pain is a disease, but it was not until the 11th edition of the ICD International Classification of Diseases in 2018 that chronic pain was officially listed as a disease. Postoperative chronic pain is one of the seven major categories of chronic pain.

The current internationally accepted diagnostic standard for chronic pain is that if the wound is still painful three months after surgery, it is considered a postoperative chronic pain disease. Director Feng Yi led a related study ten years ago and found that the incidence of postoperative chronic pain is much higher than we thought.

Several major types of surgery will almost always cause a certain percentage of chronic pain after surgery. Among them, the highest percentage of chronic pain occurs in thoracotomy, bone and joint replacement, and spinal surgery. More than 30% of patients still experience pain more than three months after these types of surgeries. It can be understood that the greater the surgical trauma, the more likely there is to be a problem of postoperative pain. Even for small surgeries such as appendectomy and hernia, 6%-8% of patients will experience pain that lasts for more than three months after surgery.

With the advancement of medical technology, minimally invasive surgery is becoming more and more common, and the incision is much smaller than before. In addition, the means of controlling acute pain after surgery have been improved, which has also reduced the proportion of patients experiencing postoperative pain. However, there are still many patients who suffer from chronic pain after surgery. This is an issue that deserves the attention of doctors and patients! We now have many means to relieve chronic pain after surgery. We will share more treatment methods with you in tomorrow's "Let's Meet the Doctor".

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