Pain

Older adults have often multiple pain-associated conditions that likely reflect multiple physiological mechanisms for pain. Persistent pain has a significant impact on all levels of functioning and on quality of life. Inadequate treatment is associated with various adverse outcomes in older people. Therefore, the management of persistent pain should be more multidimensional than for acute pain, in this population, and include nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic approaches; this chapter aims to summarize some practical recommendations for the use of analgesics in older patients.