Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Jun 2023
Role of peripheral nerve stimulation in treating chronic neuropathic pain: an international focused survey of pain medicine experts.
Interventional pain management (IPM) options for refractory neuropathic pain (NP) have recently increased with availability of peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) equipment and expertise. Given a lack of high-quality evidence and guidelines on this topic, we sought to understand the perception of physicians with expertise in treating NP regarding IPM and the role of PNS. We emailed a survey in March 2022 to international NP experts including pain medicine physicians, researchers, and leaders of 11 professional pain societies. ⋯ Twenty-two respondents (92%) agreed PNS should be offered early in the treatment of neuropathic pain. The most common barriers to PNS use were cost, lack of high-quality evidence in support of its use, lack of exposure to PNS in training programs, and lack of familiarity with the use of ultrasound guidance. PNS appears to have an increasing role in the treatment of NP but more research is needed on the outcomes of PNS to elucidate its role.