UNLABELLED The management of pain due to cancer is challenging and often requires invasive therapy in addition to medication management. Intrathecal drug delivery is a form of advanced therapy that delivers medication locally in the intrathecal space while reducing systemic side effects associated with high doses of opioids. Although risks associated with intrathecal drug delivery are low, some...

Recently, it has been reported that both thrombin-sensitive protease-activated receptor 1 (PAR-1) and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) are present not only in platelets, but also in the CNS, which indicates that they have various physiological functions. In this study, we evaluated whether PAR-1/PDGF in the spinal cord could contribute to the development of a neuropathic pain-like state in...

PURPOSE To determine the effect of intrathecal injection of morphine 0.2 mg on postoperative analgesia, activity and satisfaction after elective cesarean section. METHOD Forty-five parturients who had previously undergone cesarean section with spinal anesthesia without intrathecal morphine were enrolled in this randomized, double-blinded study. Group 1 received hyperbaric bupivacaine 10 mg in...

BACKGROUND Shivering during regional anesthesia is a common complication and is related to a decrease in the patient's core body temperature. Previous studies have shown that acupuncture on specific acupoints can preserve core body temperature. The present study evaluated the effect of electroacupuncture in preventing the shivering caused by regional anesthesia. METHODS This prospective and r...

This report describes a step-by-step guide to the technique of acute intrathecal needle injections in a noninvasive manner, i.e. independent of catheter implantation. The technical limitation of this surgical technique lies in the finesse of the hands. The injection is rapid, especially for a trained experimenter, and since tissue disruption with this technique is minimal, repeated injections a...

The two recently isolated hypothalamic peptides orexin A and orexin B, also known as hypocretin 1 and 2, are reported to be important signaling molecules in feeding and sleep/wakefulness. Orexin-containing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus project to numerous areas of the rat brain and spinal cord including the intermediolateral cell column (IML) of the thoracolumbar spinal cord. An in vivo a...

In this study, we tried to find a safe as well as fast effective treatment for sedation and analgesia for intrathecal injection in childhood leukemia patients, relieving treatment difficulties and pain, increasing the success rate of single intrathecal injection.The patients were divided into the experimental group (fentanyl combined with etomidate) and the control group (lidocaine only) random...

Background: Fentanyl is intrathecally used as an adjuvant to bupivacaine in spinal anesthesia, as well as labor analgesia, and in day surgery. The aim of this study was to determine the separate neurotoxic effect of each drug using histological analysis. Methods: Rats (N = 39) received fentanyl at 0.12μl/g body weight (0.05, 0.5, and 1 mg/ml) or bupivacaine (5, 25, and 50 mg/ml) dissolved in sa...

I read with a great interest the recent article by Alebouyeh et al. about intrathecal administration of amitriptyline and doxepin to induce spinal blockade and comparison of their effects with those of bupivacaine (1). Alebouyeh et al. reported that intrathecal injection of various drugs with different mechanisms is an intriguing issue in anesthesiology and pain management. Antidepressants are ...