Articles: analgesics.
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Pain relief is one of medicine's most important challenges and the first aim of anaesthesia. The most common technique of postoperative analgesia remains intramuscular or subcutaneous opiates. There has been a better understanding of the mechanisms of action of opiates over the last decade, and new techniques and methods of administration have been developed especially their regional application. ⋯ Opiates and local anaesthetics given by the spinal route are compared. The clinical applications of intrathecal and epidural opiates are discussed, especially in the fields of postoperative analgesia, treatment of chest trauma, and cancer pain. Lastly, the few controlled studies concerning the use of opiates in peripheral nerve blocks, especially brachial plexus blocks, and the prospects of this new technique of giving opiates regionally are discussed.
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Comparative Study
Spinal antinociceptive synergy between clonidine and morphine, U69593, and DPDPE: isobolographic analysis.
The spinal antinociceptive interaction between the opiate receptor subtype agonists morphine (mu), U69593 (kappa) and [D-Pen2,5]-enkephalin (DPDPE; delta) with clonidine (alpha 2 adrenergic) was examined. Male SD rats received fixed ratios of clonidine to morphine (10:1), U69593 (1:3), or DPDPE (10:1) through catheters terminating at the lumbar cord. ⋯ Synergy was determined by isobolographic analysis. The ED50 values for the mixtures were significantly less than the theoretical additive ED50 values, indicating synergy between clonidine and morphine, U69593, or DPDPE.
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Acta Anaesthesiol Belg · Jan 1990
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialSurgical analgesia for knee arthroscopy with epidural lignocaine and sufentanil--effect of varying sufentanil doses.
In a double blind trial the additional analgesic effect of the combination of epidural lignocaine 2% + epinephrine 1/200,000 with varying epidural Sufentanil doses was studied per- and postoperatively in patients undergoing arthroscopy of the knee. Fifty patients were randomly divided into five groups. They received epidural lignocaine 2% + epinephrine 1/200,000 in addition with respectively 0, 20, 30, 40 or 50 micrograms Sufentanil. ⋯ On the other hand, at 40 and 50 micrograms of Sufentanil significantly more patients demonstrated respiratory depression and pronounced sedation during surgery as compared to lignocaine alone. Patients in these groups had better postoperative analgesia. In addition nausea, vomiting and pruritus were seen in some patients at all doses of Sufentanil.
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Adequate pain relief during the postoperative period has long been recognized as difficult to accomplish. The reasons for this are mentioned in a brief review of methods of pain control, and an overview of the detrimental effects of acute pain is given. ⋯ It was also noted that only 30-35% of the maximum doses of analgesics prescribed were actually given within the immediate postoperative period. The possible reasons for these findings are discussed.
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The lack of control of physical suffering among cancer patients in the last days or hours of life is a common medical problem but it is rarely discussed in an open fashion. We carried out a prospective study of the dying of 120 terminal cancer patients assisted by a home care team. We documented how long it was before death that physical symptoms, unendurable to the patient and controlled only by sedation-inducing sleep, appeared. ⋯ The most frequent symptoms were dyspnea in lung and head and neck disease; pain in breast, gastrointestinal tract, colon-rectum, and male genitourinary tract cancer; and vomiting in female genitourinary tract malignancies. Data reported emphasize the clinical relevance of physical symptoms in the last days of life in terminal cancer patients and how these serve to indicate imminent death. More than 50% of these patients die with physical suffering that is controllable only by means of sedation.