• Der Schmerz · Jul 1998

    [Hydromorphone--review of pharmacological properties and therapeutic efficacy with special regard to a controlled release preparation].

    • G Lindena, H Arnau, and J Liefhold.
    • Medizinische Abteilung, Mundipharma GmbH, Limburg.
    • Schmerz. 1998 Jul 10;12(3):195-204.

    UnlabelledHydromorphone is a micro receptor agonist opioid. According to WHO recommendations, hydromorphone is to be classified in step III of pain therapy. An oral formulation with a prolonged duration of action of 12 hours has been evaluated only recently. The controlled release capsule is especially suited for the regular twice a day administration in cases of severe and persistent pain. The oral formulation of hydromorphone increases the number of opioid analgesics available for pain therapy in step III. Hydromorphone is recommended when morphine fails to produce sufficient pain relief (despite increase of doses) or causes intolerable side effects (despite treatment of symptoms). In principle, no differences in efficacy of morphine and hydromorphone are to be expected. However, clinical experience shows that changing one opioid analgesic to another one can improve the treatment of patients so that hydromorphone may replace another opioid analgesic to which a patient fails to respond well or develops side effects. The dose of hydromorphone equivalent to 2 times 30 mg controlled release morphine is about 2 times 4 mg. The values for the absorption, bioavailability and maximum plasma concentration after the administration of controlled release hydromorphone every 12 hours -of three times the dose- are equivalent to those of an immediate release tablet given every 4 hours. In several open label and controlled studies, hydromorphone proved to be of good efficacy in the treatment of acute and persistent pain, especially in patients with severe cancer pain. With regard to the incidence of side effects, no significant differences between morphine and hydromorphone could be established. In general, the side effects of hydromorphone are typical for opioid analgesics.DiscussionIn conclusion, controlled release hydromorphone seems to be well suited for the control of severe chronic pain when given twice daily.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…