"Anxiebo", placebo, and postoperative pain

Abstract Background Surgical treatment and its consequences expose patients to stress, and here we investigated the importance of the psychological component of postoperative pain based on reports in the clinical literature. Discussion Postoperative pain remains a significant clinical problem. Increased pain intensity with increased demand for opioid medication, and/or a relative unresponsiveness to pain treatment was reported both when the analgesia was administered by means of conventional nurse injection regimes and patient-controlled analgesia (PCA). Both the quality of the analgesia, and the sensitivity of postoperative models for assessing analgesic efficacy could be significantly influenced. The findings could be explained by increased penetration of an algesic anxiety-related nocebo influence (which we chose to call "anxiebo") relative to its analgesic placebo counterpart. To counteract this influence, the importance of psychological effects must be acknowledged, and doctors and attending nurses should focus on maintaining trustful therapist-patient relationships throughout the treatment period. The physical mechanism of anxiebo should be further explored, and those at risk for anxiebo better characterized. In addition, future systemic analgesic therapies should be directed towards being prophylactic and continuous to eliminate surgical pain as it appears in order to prevent the anxiebo effect. Addressing anxiebo is the key to developing reproducible models for measuring pain in the postoperative setting, and to improving the accuracy of measurements of the minimum effective analgesic concentration. Summary Anxiebo and placebo act as counterparts postoperatively. The anxiebo state may impair clinical analgesia and reduce the sensitivity of analgesic trials. Ways to minimize anxiebo are discussed.