Articles: pain-clinics.
-
Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programs have increasingly attracted the attention of clinicians who are intent on minimizing postoperative morbidity, decreasing variability in surgical care, and containing hospital costs. The purpose of this review is to discuss the relevant pathophysiology of the surgical stress response and its associated mechanisms that regulate important metabolic changes. ⋯ The implementation of a targeted ERAS program has been shown to modulate perioperative insulin sensitivity, thus improving postoperative outcomes and accelerating the return of baseline function.
-
Successful implementation of an acute pain management service involves a team approach in which team members have clearly defined roles. Clinical protocols are designed to help address common problems and prevent errors. As the complexity of surgery and patients' diseases continues to increase, current knowledge of new analgesic medications, acute pain literature, and skills in regional anesthesia techniques is imperative. Emphasizing a multimodal approach can improve analgesia and decrease opioid-related side effects.
-
This review seeks to address 10 essential questions regarding the clinical use of local anaesthetics. Each local anaesthetic has distinctive physicochemical properties but with the same mode of action; they block voltage-gated sodium channels in the axon. Sodium channel block is brought about by a conformational change and the creation of a positive charge in the channel pore. ⋯ The question of whether local anaesthetics protect against perioperative tumour progression cannot be answered at this moment, and results from clinical (retrospective) studies are equivocal. Future areas of interest will be the design of new subtype-specific sodium channel blockers, but as we look forward, older local anaesthetics such as 2-chloroprocaine are being reintroduced into the clinical setting. Multimodal perineural analgesia and liposomal bupivacaine may replace catheter techniques for some indications.
-
To present the recent literature on chronic postsurgical pain in children. ⋯ The literature on the topic is sparse. Prospective studies, including clinical examination, quantitative sensory testing, and long-term follow-up, are needed to increase our knowledge about the prevalence, risk factors, and underlying mechanisms.
-
Minerva anestesiologica · Oct 2014
ReviewPharmacological and clinical differences among transmucosal fentanyl formulations for the treatment of breakthrough cancer pain. A review article.
Breakthrough pain (BTP) is highly prevalent (59.2%) in chronic cancer patients and normally needs rescue treatments' with opioids when pain flares up. Transmucosal oral/nasal fentanyl formulations are commonly used in clinical practice. The different methods of release influence the pharmacokinetics and clinical properties of these formulations. ⋯ In parallel, we report the differences in delivery systems, bioavailability, maximum plasma concentration (Cmax), plasma half-life, and time to reach Cmax (tmax). Considerable variability emerged between formulations. This suggests some considerations on the choice of the fentanyl formulation in the light of the BTP features in each clinical case.