Abstract Adequate postoperative analgesia is an important goal of care to avoid both the acute as well as chronic complications of uncontrolled postoperative pain. Preventive analgesia has been identified as an approach to mitigate the phenomenon of central sensitization, which plays an important role in the development of chronic pain after surgery. As the over-reliance on opioids for pain control has led to issues such as opioid dependence and hyperalgesia, the role of multimodal analgesia has taken center stage in an effort to optimize perioperative pain control, reduce the chance of central sensitization, and avoid the detrimental effects of opioid overuse. Multiple classes of analgesic medications have been used to accomplish these tasks, and the aim of this chapter is to outline these medications, their mechanisms of action and key features, as well as the evidence behind their individual roles in multimodal analgesia.