Opioid analgesics.

Opioids are useful and potent drugs for the management of pain in small animal patients. They have a wide therapeutic index and can be given by a number of different routes. Some of these techniques (e.g., epidural and intraarticular) allow for the production of profound analgesia in a localized area of the body while limiting the dose and the side effects, and others provide a noninvasive method for the delivery of continuous analgesia (e.g., transdermal administration).