2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats

Access the article

Gruen, M.E. et al. (2022) 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats. Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association, 58 (2), pp. 55–76. https://doi.org/10.5326/JAAHA-MS-7292

Summary

The aim of these guidelines, produced by a task force of experts invited by the American Animal Hospital Association, is to help members of the veterinary team to assess pain and create pain management plans for pain in cats and dogs.

The guidelines provide a framework for the assessment and management of both acute and chronic pain and can be used as a basis on which to produce local practice guidelines.

The  June 2022 edition of inFOCUS contains a summary of this paper.

Support with assessing the relevance of this paper

We have produced a guide that you can use to work through this paper as a practice, to help assess the relevance of the information contained in this paper to your patients and to help you use this information to develop specific pain management guidelines for your practice. For those less confident in assessing published papers there is a partially completed guide.

Working through this guide will help you pick out the information that you wish to include in your own practice guidelines, select Clinical Metrology Instruments to use in your practice and think about first, second and third tier management strategies for different types of pain.

For those new to journal clubs, we have a step-by-step guide you might find useful: Setting up and running a journal club.

For those looking to carry out a more general appraisal of the guidelines RCVS Knowledge have developed a  Clinical Guidelines Checklist.  If you would like more information on developing practice guidelines RCVS Knowledge has a range of resources on guidelines.

Further reading

If you are interested in this topic, you may also be interested in the following resources from RCVS Knowledge

• Quality of life assessment tools [RCVS Knowledge. inFOCUS: in the Spotlight] [online] Available from: https://infocus.rcvsknowledge.org/qol-spotlight-on-quality-of-life-assessment-tools/ [accessed 4 July 2022]
• 2022 ISFM consensus guidelines on the management of acute pain in cats [RCVS Knowledge. inFOCUS] [online] Available from: https://infocus.rcvsknowledge.org/2022-isfm-consensus-guidelines-on-the-management-of-acute-pain-in-cats/ [accessed 4 July 2022]
• Chronic pain in cats: Recent advances in clinical assessment [RCVS Knowledge. inFOCUS] [online] Available from: https://infocus.rcvsknowledge.org/chronic-pain-in-cats-recent-advances-in-clinical-assessment/ [accessed 4 July 2022]
• Assessment of quality of life and chronic pain in dogs [RCVS Knowledge. inFOCUS] [online] Available from: https://infocus.rcvsknowledge.org/assessment-of-quality-of-life-and-chronic-pain-in-dogs/ [accessed 4 July 2022]
• Managing pain in common end-of-life conditions [RCVS Knowledge. inFOCUS] [online] Available from: https://infocus.rcvsknowledge.org/managing-pain-in-common-end-of-life-conditions/ [accessed 4 July 2022]
• Pain scoring systems for cats [RCVS Knowledge. inFOCUS] [online] Available from: https://infocus.rcvsknowledge.org/pain-scoring-systems-for-cats/ [accessed 4 July 2022]
• Wong, A. and Martinez Taboada, F. (2021) In dogs with osteoarthritis, how effective is treatment with tramadol in providing analgesia? Veterinary Evidence, 6 (2)  https://doi.org/10.18849/ve.v6i2.401
• Wong, L.Y.S. and Govendir, M. (2022) Comparison of the effect of marine-derived omega-3 fatty acids (n-3 FAs) as an adjunct to a non-steroidal inflammatory drug (NSAID) therapy vs NSAID therapy alone, for dogs with osteoarthritis. Veterinary Evidence, 7 (1) https://doi.org/10.18849/ve.v7i1.527