[Paracetamol-codeine, an always actual choice for the treatment of pain.]

Acute pain of mild to moderate intensity is one of the problems most frequently encountered in primary care and emergency medicine and is a major reason of request for visit by patients. In recent years the focus has been more on the treatment of chronic pain, perhaps ignoring the negative impact of acute pain on quality of life and functional status of the patient, despite a growing number of evidence indicating the need to treat optimally also acute pain to avoid it prolongs in time. The remarkable progress achieved in the understanding of the physiological mechanisms of the nociceptive stimulus, as well as those common to biochemical inflammation and acute pain, highlighted the active and complex role of central nervous system in the genesis and maintenance of pain that from acute, if not promptly and adequately treated, can become chronic. In this article, after a brief introduction on the most recent advances on the transition from acute to chronic pain, we have focused on paracet