Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Apr 2024
Tracking persistent postoperative opioid use: a proof-of-concept study demonstrating a use case for natural language processing.
Large language models have been gaining tremendous popularity since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022. Perioperative pain providers should leverage natural language processing (NLP) technology and explore pertinent use cases to improve patient care. One example is tracking persistent postoperative opioid use after surgery. Since much of the relevant data may be 'hidden' within unstructured clinical text, NLP models may prove to be advantageous. The primary objective of this proof-of-concept study was to demonstrate the ability of an NLP engine to review clinical notes and accurately identify patients who had persistent postoperative opioid use after major spine surgery. ⋯ Access to unstructured data within the perioperative history can contextualize patients' opioid use and provide further insight into the opioid crisis, while at the same time improve care directly at the patient level. While these goals are in reach, future work is needed to evaluate how to best implement NLP within different healthcare systems for use in clinical decision support.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Fluoroscopy-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound ablation of the lumbar medial branch nerves: dose escalation study and comparison with radiofrequency ablation in a porcine model.
Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a common method for alleviating chronic back pain by targeting and ablating of facet joint sensory nerves. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is an emerging, non-invasive, image-guided technology capable of providing thermal tissue ablation. While HIFU shows promise as a potentially superior option for ablating sensory nerves, its efficacy needs validation and comparison with existing methods. ⋯ These findings suggest that HIFU may be more effective than RFA in inducing thermal necrosis of the nerve.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
First evidence of a biomarker-based dose-response relationship in chronic pain using physiological closed-loop spinal cord stimulation.
In spinal cord stimulation (SCS) therapy, electricity is the medication delivered to the spinal cord for pain relief. In contrast to conventional medication where dose is determined by desired therapeutic plasma concentration, there is lack of equivalent means of determining dose delivery in SCS. In open-loop (OL) SCS, due to the dynamic nature of the epidural space, the activating electric field delivered is inconsistent at the level of the dorsal columns. Recent Food and Drug Administration guidance suggests accurate and consistent therapy delivered using physiologic closed-loop control (PCLC) devices can minimize underdosage or overdosage and enhance medical care. PCLC-based evoked compound action potential (ECAP)-controlled technology provides the ability to prescribe a precise stimulation dose unique to each patient, continuously measure neural activation, and objectively inform SCS therapy optimization. ⋯ Higher dose, more time over ECAP threshold, and higher accuracy are associated with better outcomes across patients. There is potential to optimize individual patient outcomes based on unique objective measurable electrophysiological inputs.