Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Low-dose ketamine infusion to facilitate opioid tapering in chronic non-cancer pain with opioid-use disorder: a historical cohort study.
Long-term opioid use is associated with pharmacological tolerance, a risk of misuse and hyperalgesia in patients with chronic pain (CP). Tapering is challenging in this context, particularly with comorbid opioid-use disorder (OUD). The antihyperalgesic effect of ketamine, through N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonism, could be useful. We aimed to describe the changes in the dose of opioids consumed over 1 year after a 5-day hospitalisation with ketamine infusion for CP patients with OUD. ⋯ A 5-day hospitalisation with a low-dose ketamine infusion appeared useful to facilitate opioid tapering in long-term opioid users with CP and OUD. Ketamine was well tolerated, and patients did not present significant withdrawal symptoms. Prospective and comparative studies are needed to confirm our findings.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Intravenous versus oral acetaminophen for pain and quality of recovery after ambulatory spine surgery: a randomized controlled trial.
As ambulatory spine surgery increases, efficient recovery and discharge become essential. Multimodal analgesia is superior to opioids alone. Acetaminophen is a central component of multimodal protocols and both intravenous and oral forms are used. While some advantages for intravenous acetaminophen have been touted, prospective studies with patient-centered outcomes are lacking in ambulatory spine surgery. A substantial cost difference exists. We hypothesized that intravenous acetaminophen would be associated with fewer opioids and better recovery. ⋯ Intravenous acetaminophen was not superior to the oral form in ambulatory spine surgery patients. This does not support routine use of the more expensive intravenous form to improve recovery and accelerate discharge.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Neurophysiological outcomes that sustained clinically significant improvements over 3 years of physiologic ECAP-controlled closed-loop spinal cord stimulation for the treatment of chronic pain.
A novel, spinal cord stimulation (SCS) system with a physiologic closed-loop (CL) feedback mechanism controlled by evoked compound action potentials (ECAPs) enables the optimization of physiologic neural dose and the accuracy of the stimulation, not possible with any other commercially available SCS systems. The report of objective spinal cord measurements is essential to increase the transparency and reproducibility of SCS therapy. Here, we report a cohort of the EVOKE double-blind randomized controlled trial treated with CL-SCS for 36 months to evaluate the ECAP dose and accuracy that sustained the durability of clinical improvements. ⋯ The results suggest that a physiological adherence to supra-ECAP threshold therapy that generates pain inhibition provided by ECAP-controlled CL-SCS leads to durable improvements in pain intensity with no evidence of loss of therapeutic effect through 36-month follow-up.