Papers of the Week

Preemptive analgesia refers to the use of analgesics or regional nerve block in advance of nerve conduction changing or nerve remodeling caused by traumatic stimulation, so as to achieve better postoperative pain relief and to prevent postoperative pain hypersensitivity. Preemptive analgesia minimizes or prevents postoperative pain by reducing peripheral and central sensitization, which thereby limit the pain cascade. This paper briefly introduces the mechanism and methods of preemptive analgesia, as well as its application and research progress in the field of oral treatment. With the increased requirements for comfortable medical treatments and popularization of multimodal analgesia in pain management of oral surgery, preemptive analgesia will be more widely studied and applied in oral diagnosis and treatment.