First-line treatment for pain and pyrexia, it plays an important role in multimodal analgesia,1,2 and is considered to possess a generally excellent safety profile except in significant overdose, with few drug interactions. Oral and rectal administration can produce analgesia within 40 min, with maximal effect at 1 h, but large variations in bioavailability (ranging from 63 to 89% for oral, and 24 to 98% for rectally administered preparations) can make the onset and duration of action unpredictable. The introduction of its i.v. administered formulation within the last decade not only overcomes this issue of bioavailability that limits its speed of onset, but its ease of use when enteral administration is not possible has also cemented its position within virtually every anaesthetic/peroperative pain management plan. The onset of analgesia after i.v. paracetamol occurs within 5 min, peaking at 40–60 min, and lasting 4–6 h