Akut och cancerrelaterad smärta – Smärtmedicin Vol. 1

This third edition of the comprehensive Swedish textbook on “everything” related to pain, to pain mechanisms, to the pain-experience as a bio-psycho-social phenomenon, its assessment and management based on solid knowledge from recent research, is a major undertaking. In order to make this thoroughly up-dated textbook project manageable it now comes in two volumes of each some 600+ pages.

This book is edited by Mads U. Werner of Lund (and Copenhagen) and Emmanuel Bäckryd from Linköping. It is extremely well edited, all chapters clearly well researched and up-to-date, well-illustrated with figures and tables that are so well done (figures mostly by MUW), that reading, understanding, and remembering the key messages come easily to the reader. The Swedish language is understood by most health care persons in the five Nordic countries, around 20–25 million inhabitants altogether.

The present Volume 1, covering acute pain and pain related to cancer, is a multi-author publication of 16 chapters by 23 Swedish authors, in addition to 11 chapters authored and co-authored by the two editors.

Volume 2, covering the complex issues around “chronic pain”, is on its way, hopefully available sometime in the spring of 2020.

In Volume 1 there are three sections: The first section is about pain physiology, psychology of pain, pharmacology and pain research; the second section about acute pain covers several aspects of postoperative pain, pain in the intensive care unit, obstetric pain, acute abdominal and orthopaedic pain, as well as pain in children.

The third section covers most aspects of cancer-related pain in 10 chapters, including palliative care and the challenging management of children with cancer-related pain.

Knowing well the burden of editing a multi-author publication like this one, creating a coherent and highly reliable, up-to-date book, the two editors, Mads U. Werner and Emmanuel Bäckryd, have my deepest admiration. I congratulate them and the many grateful readers in the Nordic countries and beyond, who will benefit greatly from reading and studying this book.

I am eagerly awaiting Volume 2 on “chronic pain”, soon to be released as well.

Harald Breivik

Professor emeritus from the University of Oslo and

Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Scandinavian Journal of Pain