The importance of postoperative analgesia after major thoracic surgery interventions, protocols, applications, and the following evaluation of the patient's quality of life

Introduction: Major thoracic surgery procedures constitute a standard method of diagnosis and/or therapy against lung, mediastinal cancer and other non-malignant manifestations of the respiratory system. Such patients' recovery and rehabilitation depend directly from the applied postoperative analgesia, with purpose to determine an optimum and long-term quality of life. Background: Our database consists of 300 individuals, submitted to major thoracic surgery procedure during a 2 - year period of time (between December 2016 and December 2018) at the Thoracic Surgery Department of Theageneio Cancer Hospital, Thessaloniki. Methods: Every operative method is accompanied with three different types of postoperative analgesia, depending on the demands of the surgical approach: Each patient's postoperative management and evaluation is performed via usage of three Quality of Life (QoL) Questionnaires and the VAS - Visual Analog Scale for pain, leading to the determination of the QoL Index. Results: Each patient answers the Questionnaires in 4 specific time intervals. The differentiation in their answers is the key point to extract important information about their postoperative health evolution. A detailed questionnaire evaluation follows, both individually and in groups, according to the subgroup of each patient's pain treatment, a combined study which is applied in this form for the first time. Conclusions: The measure of a QoL index is widely taken into account as one of the most accurate indicators of a patient's health evolution. The results supply us with significant information which is added to the initial management strategy, mainly regarding pain symptomatology and eventual complications and discomforts, while they indicate us towards a thorough realization of each patient's follow up individually and the achievement of an optimal Quality of Life level.