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The author deals with postoperative pain control, and defines pain in general. Several factors determing the intensity and duration of postoperative pain are presented. Surgery involving no protection against nociception is very likely to bring about chronic pain. Patients given inadequate analgesia show increased incidence of postoperative complications. The author presents some new methods of postoperative pain control and stresses the efficiency of opioids, local anaesthetics and nonsteroid antiinflamatic drugs combined analgesia in adults and children, which are employed at the Department of Maxillo Facial and Oral Surgery Ljubljana for effective postoperative pain control therapy in different patient and disease groups. The author discusses reasons for the uneffectiveness of conventional methods to relieve pain after surgery, and presents the problem of postoperative pain as experience by the patient.