Pain physician
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Vertebral metastases are associated with significant pain, disability, and morbidity. Open surgery for fracture stabilization is often inappropriate in this cancer population due to a poor risk-benefit profile, particularly if life expectancy is short. Vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty are appealing adjunctive procedures in patients with malignancy for alleviation of intractable pain. However, these patients have a higher risk of serious complications, notably cement extravasation. ⋯ The Kiva System potentially represents a novel and effective minimally invasive treatment option for patients suffering from severe pain due to osteolytic vertebral metastases.
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Cervical epidural steroid injections, administered either interlaminarly or transforaminally, are common injection therapies used in many interventional pain management practices to treat cervicalgia or cervicobrachial pain secondary to spondylosis or intervertebral disc displacement of the cervical spine. Among the risks associated with these procedures are the risk for inadvertent dural puncture and the development of positional headache from intracranial hypotension. ⋯ Determining the optimal location or approach to administer an epidural blood patch can be a challenge depending on the location of the CSF leak. Our case demonstrates that targeted cervical epidural blood patch placement using an easily manipulated catheter under fluoroscopic guidance is a safe and effective approach to treat a massive CSF leak in the high cervical spine region caused by prior therapeutic cervical spine epidural steroid injection.
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Transforaminal technique for epidural steroid injections, unlike other approaches, is uniquely associated with permanent, bilateral, lower extremity paralysis. ⋯ In light of the anatomical and radiological evidence in the literature that radicular arteries dwell in the superior part of the foramen and along with our needle position analysis, we suggest that the traditional technique of placing the needle in the superior and anterior part of the foramen must be reexamined. Alternative, safer techniques must be considered, one of which is described.
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For more than 3 decades, spinal cord stimulation (SCS) has successfully been employed to treat neuropathic pain. Psychological factors are assumed to be important for the efficacy of SCS. However, the impact of psychological factors on the outcome of SCS has only rarely been studied. ⋯ The outcome of SCS therapy could not be predicted on the basis of tested psychological factors anxiety/depression and pain-related disability. FESS correlated inversely with HADS-D, BDI-II, and PDI scores and showed a tendency towards correlation with the percentage of pain reduction. Further research is needed to define the impact of psychological factors on SCS outcomes.
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Evidence for opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH) has been shown in animal and human studies, but the clinical implications of this phenomenon remain unclear. ⋯ The results of this study suggest that opioid medication is an important contributing factor to pain perception accompanying LA injection, and cancer patients using high-dose opioids may be highly susceptible to hyperalgesic responses to this clinical stimulus. We also suggest that the possible presence of OIH may be intensified among cancer patients with poor physical and psychosocial functional status.