The importance of multimodal analgesics in feline pain

Sponsored by Banfield Pet Hospital

In an interview with dvm360 about her recent session, "Me-OUCH! Feline Pain Assessment," at the 2024 Southwest Veterinary Symposium in Forth Worth, Texas, Kelly Foltz, CVT, LVT, RVT, VTS (ECC), explained that cats feel pain in many of the same ways that humans and dogs do. Additionally, because of their smaller size, feline trauma patients often experience polytrauma. For these reasons, it's optimal to have a multimodal approach to feline analgesics, addressing any and all sources of pain.

Below is a partial transcript

Kelly Foltz, CVT, LVT, RVT, VTS (ECC): So, when we're approaching pain in the small animal patient, we really want to make sure that we are able to address all types of pain and all causes of pain that we may have in our small animal patients. If we think about the feline trauma patient, they're often going to experience what we call polytrauma, right? Given their small size, in comparison to, for example, dogs, something like being attacked by an animal or hit by a car is going to be more impactful for them because they are smaller. So we might actually see orthopedic injuries, soft tissue injuries, injuries that may potentially cause nerve damage, and those are different kinds of pain, right? Soft tissue pain, bone pain and neuropathic pain. So we want to adopt a multimodal approach.