There have been few studies of the intrathecal position of spinal catheters in continuous spinal anaesthesia. This prospective study was designed to examine radiologically the intrathecal position of 28-gauge spinal catheters. We studied the entry into the subarachnoid space and the intrathecal position of 68 spinal catheters. In 50%, the catheters passed in a cranial direction, in 34% the cath...

OBJECTIVE To study the efficacy of intrathecal morphine infusion to treat spasticity. SETTING Functional Neurosurgery Division of University of São Paulo, Brazil. METHOD Twelve patients with clinical refractory spasticity were studied. Two females and 10 males, with median age of 34.4 years (20 to 61 ys.). The initial Ashworth scale was 4.6. They were submitted to pump implantation for intr...

INTRODUCTION To report and discuss the spinal headache following insertion and removal of intrathecal drug delivery system in patients with chronic pain disorders. CASE PRESENTATION Intrathecal drug delivery system (IDDS) was initially used for the management of chronic malignant pain; it has since been used to manage pain from other nonmalignant conditions as well. Spinal headache is one of ...

BACKGROUND In 2006, the authors observed a cluster of three deaths, which circumstances suggested were opioid-related, within 1 day after placement of intrathecal opioid pumps for noncancer pain. Further investigation suggested that mortality among such patients was higher than previously appreciated. The authors performed investigations to quantify that mortality and compare the results to con...

A preliminary study is reported on the kinetics of meptazinol following intrathecal and i.m. administration in the Patas monkey. Following intrathecal administration (single dose of 0.5 mg) at T12/L1, meptazinol rapidly disappeared from the CSF with a T1/2 of 35 min. At 240 min after intrathecal injection, most of the meptazinol had been distributed within the spinal tissue near the region of t...

BACKGROUND The efficacy of opioids for neuropathic pain remains controversial. The effects of morphine on pain behavior were investigated in two animal models of neuropathic pain: the spared nerve injury (SNI) model and the spinal nerve ligation (SNL) model. METHODS Nerve injuries were created in rats either by tight ligation and section of the left tibial and common peroneal nerves (SNI) or ...

Adding morphine to intrathecal bupivacaine provides sound analgesia, but is associated with side effects. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the contribution of intrathecal morphine to postoperative analgesia for total hip replacement outweighs its side effects in a modern multimodal setting. From November 2012 till January 2013 patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty (THA) under...