Pain physician
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Case Reports
Greater trochanteric pain syndrome due to tumoral calcinosis in a patient with chronic kidney disease.
Tumoral calcinosis is a rare syndrome characterized by massive subcutaneous soft tissue deposits of calcium phosphate near the large joints. It is more prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease undergoing dialysis. A 57-year-old woman was referred to our pain clinic with the complaint of severe pain in the left buttock and lateral hip. ⋯ The patient was diagnosed with tumoral calcinosis based on the past medical history, simple plain radiographs, and hip magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We diagnosed a case of greater trochanteric pain syndrome due to tumoral calcinosis related to chronic kidney disease in a patient whose symptoms had initially been considered to be radiating leg pain caused by lumbar spinal disease. We report our experience of symptomatic improvement following the repeated ultrasound-guided aspiration of calcific fluid and the injection of a mixture of local anesthetic and steroid.
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Case Reports
Neurolytic transversus abdominal plane block with alcohol for long-term malignancy related pain control.
There have been several case reports in the literature of neurolytic transversus abdominis plane (TAP) blocks being used for malignant abdominal wall pain. However, most used phenol as a neurolytic agent. We found only a single case report by Sakamoto using alcohol for TAP neurolysis. ⋯ Addition of a depo steroid for diagnostic TAP blockade prior to neurolysis did not appear to extend or provide additional analgesia. Based on our observations, TAP neurolysis using alcohol also offers a feasible option for long-term control of malignant abdominal wall pain. Further investigation is needed to determine if alcohol offers any significant advantage compared with phenol.