El dolor es una experiencia sensorial y emocional desagradable asociada a lesion tisular real o potencial, en especial si se conoce que el desencadenante es una intervencion operatoria. Pese al avance en tecnicas analgesicas y medicamentos, se presenta dolor postoperatorio moderado a severo en el 70% de los pacientes intervenidos. Se viene proponiendo la analgesia multimodal, que involucra a la analgesia preventiva y la analgesia anticipada. Igualmente un manejo analgesico especifico para cada procedimiento quirurgico, sin perder de vista los factores individuales del paciente y tampoco los efectos adversos de los medicamentos que pueden impactar negativamente el resultado de la cirugia. Esta guia indica pautas para el manejo del dolor postoperatorio y reproduce propuestas de la iniciativa PROSPECT. Rev.cienc. biomed. 2012:3(2):360-372 PALABRAS CLAVES Dolor postoperatorio; Medicion del dolor; Analgesia; Opioides; AINES. SUMMARY Pain is an unpleasant sensorial and emotional experience associated to real or potential tissue response, in special if the trigger factor is known, as it occurs in a surgical procedure. In spite of the advance in analgesic techniques and medication, moderate to severe postoperative pain is presented in 70% of the operated patients. Multimodal analgesia has been proposed due to it involves preventive analgesia and advance analgesia. Equally an specific analgesic management for each surgical procedure, without losing of sight the individual factors of the patient and neither the adverse effects of the medication which can have negative impact in the result of the surgery. This guide indicates patterns for the management of the postoperative pain and it reproduces proposals of the initiative PROSPECT. Rev.cienc.biomed.2012:3(2):360-372 KEYWORDS Post-operative pain; Pain measurement; Analgesia; Opioid analgesics; NSAI.