Abstract:Objective: To investigate the effect of pain and analgesia on postthoracotomy cardiopulmonary complication. Methods:The degree of pain from the first day to the sixth day of postoperation in 516 patients with pulmonary lobectomy or esophagectomy was analysed.In these cases, four methods of cryoanalgesia,epidural analgesia,intravenous analgesia,intramuscular analgesia were used. Visual analogue scales(VAS) was analysed to determine the degree of pain. This cases were divided into full analgesia and insufficiency analgesia group by VAS (less than or equal to 4 and larger than 5),and postthoracotomy cardiopulmonary complication was investigated in two groups. Results:The postoperative total rates of the cardiopulmonary complication in full analgesia group and isufficiency analgesia group were 15.20% and 30.77%. The rates of pulmonary complication and cardiac complication in two groups were 13.73%, 25.32% and 4.41%, 12.5% respectively. All had significant difference between two groups(P<0.05). The rates of the full analgesia in the methods of cryoanalgesia, epidural analgesia, intravenous analgesia, intramuscular analgesia were 75.79%, 52.17%, 43.08%, 11.93% respectively. Conclusion: The purpose of postthoracotomy analgesia is to control the degree of pain less than or equal to 4 with VAS. Full postthoracotomy analgesia is one of the significant measure to decrease cardiopulmonary complications.