Articles: acute-pain.
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Why is this important?
Buprenorphine (Subutex, Tamgesic, Suboxone, Norspan) is a partial opioid agonist with high mu-receptor affinity, though limited by a ceiling effect. Because of its favourable safety profile it is used for opioid dependence, chronic and, increasingly, acute pain.1
Patients historically often have regular buprenorphine (BUP) ceased post-operatively when needing opioid analgesia. It was assumed that because of it’s high mu-receptor affinity, BUP blocks the efficacy of additional opioid analgesics. In reality, ceasing buprenorphine creates more complexity and may precipitate acute withdrawal.
Be smart
Haber, DeFries & Martin point out that despite the high receptor affinity of BUP, there are still additional receptors remaining for full-agonist opioids to bind and activate. This is supported by the literature (Kornfeld 2010 & Harrison 2018). Even in the post-operative period buprenorphine can be easily continued, although with patients sometimes needing higher doses of acute opioid analgesics (Goel 2019 & Hansen 2016).
“Temporarily discontinuing buprenorphine introduces unnecessary complexity to a hospitalization, places the patient at risk of exacerbation of pain, opioid withdrawal...“
Bottom-line
If buprenorphine is regularly being taken then it should not be ceased for hospital admission. Additional short-acting opioids can be added if needed. Doses required may be higher, but this is primarily due to opioid tolerance rather than receptor competition with BUP. Alternatively, a maintenance BUP dose can be split into 3-4 divided doses and/or increased to cover acute analgesic needs.
summary
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Buprenorphine is also a kappa and delta receptor antagonist, a weak partial NOP/Nociceptin receptor agonist, and has potent local anaesthetic effects. It behaves as a full agonist for analgesia in the opioid-naive, but a partial agonist for respiratory depression. ↩
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Curr Opin Anaesthesiol · Oct 2019
ReviewPatient-reported outcome measures for acute and chronic pain: current knowledge and future directions.
During the past years, patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have become of growing awareness and importance in medical research and practice. This review summarizes recent developments concerning PROs and PROMs related to pain in the acute postoperative as well as chronic settings and indicates gaps and challenges relevant for future research and clinical applications. ⋯ COSs of PRO and PROMs are crucial in the field of research to enhance the comparability of results and reducing outcome reporting bias. In clinical practice PROs and PROMs are important for allocation of treatment. Concerning the development and implementation of PROs and PROMs patients' perspective should be thoroughly considered. Relating to acute as well as chronic pain there are some attempts to create COSs of PROs and PROMs but validity and reliability for both are still missing.
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Curr Opin Anaesthesiol · Oct 2019
ReviewCan recent chronic pain techniques help with acute perioperative pain?
This article discussed how the knowledge and technique of a few chronic pain procedures benefited the perioperative clinicians in their care of patients receiving specific orthopaedic surgical procedures. ⋯ Despite the widespread use of regional anaesthesia and multimodal analgesia in the perioperative pain management, more than two-third of the patients reported severe postoperative pain. Therefore, other therapeutic strategies used in chronic pain management such as radiofrequency ablation and neuromodulation have been proposed to optimize acute postsurgical pain. The early experience with those techniques is encouraging, and more studies are required to explore the incorporation of these procedures in the perioperative care.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Feasibility of a Hybrid Web-Based and In-Person Self-management Intervention Aimed at Preventing Acute to Chronic Pain Transition After Major Lower Extremity Trauma (iPACT-E-Trauma): A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.
Objective 1) To assess the feasibility of research methods to test a self-management intervention aimed at preventing acute to chronic pain transition in patients with major lower extremity trauma (iPACT-E-Trauma) and 2) to evaluate its potential effects at three and six months postinjury. Design A pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) with two parallel groups. Setting A supraregional level 1 trauma center. ⋯ Low mean scores of pain catastrophizing (Pain Catastrophizing Scale score < 30) and anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale scores ≤ 10) were obtained through the end of the study. Conclusions Some challenges that need to be addressed in a future RCT include the small proportion of screened patients who were eligible and the selection of appropriate tools to measure the development of chronic pain. Studies will need to be conducted with patients presenting more serious injuries and psychological vulnerability or using a stepped screening approach.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Analgesic Effect of Nitrous Oxide/Oxygen Mixture for Traumatic Pain in the Emergency Department: A Randomized, Double-Blind Study.
Acute pain is the most common complaint in Emergency Department (ED) admissions, and options for analgesia are limited. Nitrous oxide/oxygen possesses many properties showing it may be an ideal analgesic in the ED. ⋯ This study gives supporting evidence for the safety and effectiveness of using self-administered nitrous oxide/oxygen mixture in the ED for moderate-to-severe traumatic pain.