Pain physician
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Case Reports
Use of eptifibatide as a bridge antiplatelet agent for intrathecal drug delivery system placement.
Use of antiplatelet agents is becoming increasingly common, and their management may require new strategies if neuroaxial techniques are to be employed in patients who will not tolerate discontinuation of antiplatelet therapy. The patient was a 46-year-old man with a past medical history significant for coronary artery disease and who had undergone 14 stents. He developed stent thrombosis (ST) while on clopidogrel. ⋯ Patients requiring antiplatelet therapy in need of neuroaxial pain management procedures present challenging problems to pain management physicians. Current guidelines from the American Society of Regional Anesthesia have not identified any bridging agent suitable for patients who may not tolerate prolonged withdrawal from their antiplatelet therapy. In this case, eptifibatide was successfully utilized to bridge a patient whose comorbid conditions necessitated continuous antiplatelet therapy without the prolonged washout common to irreversible antiplatelet agents.
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To accurately assess the effect of any therapy for treating discogenic low back pain, the natural history of such pain should be known beforehand. However, until now, no pathological characteristic could be used to predict the disease course of low back pain. ⋯ The present study indicated that the natural history of discogenic low back pain was chronic but persistent, and that the pain and disability in most patients did not improve over time.
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Case Reports
SynchroMed II intrathecal pump memory errors due to repeated magnetic resonance imaging.
Cancer patients with severe refractory pain are often managed with implantable drug delivery systems (IDDS). The only drugs with US Food and Drug Administration approval for intrathecal use are morphine, ziconotide, and baclofen. Other drugs used and mixed include, hydromorphone, bupivacaine, sufentanil, and fentanyl. ⋯ The second time, 29 months later, the patient was admitted to the hospital to manage withdrawal symptoms and the pump had to be exchanged with a new device. Post-MRI pump interrogation should be performed on all patients with IDDS to ensure proper functioning of the pump. Special attention should be paid to patients receiving baclofen, as acute withdrawal can be very serious, even deadly.
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Epidural steroid injections (ESI) are therapeutically useful for the treatment of herniated intervertebral discs and spinal stenosis. However, there is a lack of evidence-based data about the safety of steroids. ⋯ HPA axis function was suppressed after ESI until Day 21 and returned to the normal range after 19.9 ± 6.8 days. Therefore, we suggest that the minimal interval between ESI treatments should be at least one month. In addition, we report that salivary cortisol measurements are very useful diagnostic predictors of HPA function.
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Current treatments for neuropathic pain are far from satisfactory. Considering the essential contribution of central immune factors to the pathogenesis of neuropathic pain, targeting inflammatory response is well accepted as an effective strategy for treating neuropathic pain. Triptolide has a long history in traditional Chinese medicine for treating inflammatory diseases and has been proven to inhibit cytokines released from glial cells. ⋯ Our data suggest that triptolide may be a potential novel treatment for neuropathic pain through modulating immune response in the spinal dorsal horn.