WSAVA issues new global pain guidelines

New guidelines for recognising, assessing and treating pain have been issued by the WSAVA’s global pain council (GPC).

The updated guidance, which was launched during the association’s annual congress in Lima, Peru, includes evaluations of both new drugs and some non-drug therapies.

Officials hope the measures will encourage vets to take action to prevent fear and anxiety, as well as pain, together with frequent assessments.

The guidance also includes recommendations for improving the experience of hospitalised patients and advising clients caring for pets with chronic pain at home.

Comprehensive

GPC chair Bea Monteiro said: “Pain management is an area of veterinary medicine in which knowledge and understanding has expanded dramatically in recent years.

“Members of the GPC have worked tirelessly to pull together these latest WSAVA guidelines, which now provide the most comprehensive and state-of-the-art resource available to support veterinary professionals, wherever in the world they are in practice.

“With animal sentience now legally recognised in many countries and jurisdictions, veterinary health professionals have a medical and ethical duty to mitigate suffering to the best of our ability.”

Important

Mike McFarland, chief medical officer of Zoetis, which supports the committee’s work, said: “Because we know that pain can lower quality of life and disrupt the important human-animal bond, which benefits people and the pets they love, it’s important to ensure veterinarians around the world have access to solutions that can help better diagnose and alleviate pain in animals.”

The original global pain guidelines were published in 2014 and have been downloaded 53,000 times since then.

The new guidelines have been published in the WSAVA’s Journal of Small Animal Practice and are also available via its website.

Currently available in English, the advice is being translated into a number of other languages.