Each drug class works at a different step of the pain pathway, and each one carries its own risk. Build a plan, set the relative dose and route, and watch the pain score, the breathing rate, sedation and organ load move across twelve hours.
Twelve hours of the plan arrows mark each dose
The top panel is the pain score. The green band is comfort, at 3 or less. The lower panel holds the breathing rate and the sedation score, the two things that move first when an opioid dose is too high.
The WHO analgesic ladder the step is set by the pain
The ladder matches drug strength to pain strength. Non-opioids and helper drugs stay in the plan at every step. Helper drugs, called adjuvants, are the ones that calm a damaged nerve. The WHO withdrew the three step ladder in 2018, but it is still used as a way to learn the idea.
Build a planpick one or more classes below
The pain being treated
The classes in the plan up to four
Live numbers
The risk picture
What this plan is doing
This is a teaching model of how the drug classes behave as a group. The dose is shown in relative steps, not in milligrams, and it is not a plan for any one person.