The intrathecal drug administration system (ITDAS) has recently been introduced for treating chronic intractable pain patients who have failed with conservative pain treatments. The obvious advantages of its use are the direct intrathecal delivery of drugs, which yields reduced adverse effects and the increased strength of drugs, as compared to its oral or intravenous route. This article offers a review of the ITDAS with a brief review of its evidence-based effectiveness, the technical approach, and the complications.
Humans ; Pain, Intractable

Radiofrequcy(RF) treatment has a long history, more than hundred years, for the management of chronic intractable pain of various causes. With better understanding of pain mechanism and advancement of technology, along with previous valuable experience, a simpler and safer method of delivering RF thermo coagulation to ideal sites are now available that can be expected to provide more beneficial effects to these patients with chronic disabling pain. This type of treatment will be especially helpful in aged in whom surgery is often contraindicated or highly risky due to medical problems. Here, using up-to-dated, evidence based knowledge and personal experience, authors have tried to introduce briefly the history and basic mechanism of RF technique and various clinical situations where this type of therapy is currently known to be indicated or effective in providing substantial pain relief. In summary, the RF thermocoagulation is proven to be effective way of providing significant pain relief in many chronic refractory pain states with numerous advantages such as minimal invasive, quantitative lesioning with temperature-controlled, well-circumscription of lesions, simplicity and feasibility of procedure, and most of all safety and cost-effectiveness. When it is selected based on careful investigation on type and cause of pain it can be expected to provide relatively long duration of pain relief and also to help to recover functional disabilities from such pain. However, judicious use is warranted because some painful conditions are known to be ineffective or contraindicated from this type of therapy and because there are possible serious complications, although very few. Use of latest technique of pulsed, high-frequency, low-temperatured thermocoagulation will possibly bring hope and new insights in the management of chronic intractable pain of neuropathic in nature. Further research and experience will be required before justifying this type of therapy in appling broader and more challenging situations.
Electrocoagulation ; Hope ; Humans ; Neuralgia ; Pain, Intractable*

Chemical rhizotomy with the intrathecal alcohol injection was firstly attempted by Dogliotti in 1931, and with phenol in 1955 by Maher. The intrathecal neurolytic injection was a very simple, effective and nonsurgical procedure without any great danger. Good indications for the procedure are the bilateral pelvic and lower limb pain syndrome, well circumscribed pain in limited area and in poor general condition. We have reported two cases of intractable pain of limited area, successfully relieved by chemical rhizotomy, and discussed the importance of the procedure and presented the review of literatures.
Lower Extremity ; Pain, Intractable* ; Phenol ; Rhizotomy

To a patient suffering from intractable pain due to the terminal state of cervix cancer, 7% phenol-glycerine solution was injected through the L2-L3 interspace. We obtained a good result of pain relief, but motor paralysis developed.
Humans ; Pain, Intractable ; Paralysis ; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms

The implantation of spinal cord stimulators (SCSs) to treat chronic intractable pain is steadily increasing. And there is an increased likelihood of instances where other therapies or procedures are found to interfere with SCS function, which in turn may result in pain. Since SCS utilize electric impulses as well as magnets, special considerations need for patients with a SCS in situ who require these procedures. The present report describes a case where radiofrequency (RF) ablation of the third occipital nerve resulted in spontaneous activation of a cervical SCS device.
Humans ; Magnets ; Pain, Intractable ; Spinal Cord

Vertebroplasty has become a common treatment for painful osteoporotic vertebral fractures, but there is limited evidence to support its use. We are debating what the effectiveness of vertebroplasty. Especially, published paper by Buchbinder using multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial methods, there were no beneficial effect of vertebroplasty as compared with a sham procedure in patients with painful osteoporotic vertebral fractures, at 1 week or at 1, 3, or 6 months after treatment. We have some problems about the risk of subsequent vertebral fractures, particularly in vertebrae that are adjacent to treated levels, sometimes after cement has leaked into the adjacent disk. But according to the previous many study and my experiences, Percutaneous vertebroplasty should be considered as a valid therapeutic option in symptomatic acute amyelic osteoporotic vertebral fractures with refractory pain after a short period of analgesic drug therapy. Therefore, I reviewed Buchbinder's result and previous similar papers.
Drug Therapy ; Humans ; Pain, Intractable ; Spine ; Vertebroplasty

Intractable chronic pain is a debilitative pain conditions for most patients. Unfortunately, the pain control managements currently have shown that it is not appropriate to reduce pain and limited efficacy and sometimes unfavorable in some patients. Scrambler (Calmare) therapy, used as an alternative treatment for chronic neuropathic pain recently, is a noninvasive approach to relieve pain by changing pain perception. The author reports the clinical experiences on effectiveness of Scrambler therapy for three patients with intractable pain refractory to conventional treatment.
Chronic Pain* ; Humans ; Neuralgia ; Pain Perception ; Pain, Intractable

Many patients with upper abdominal organ cancers, including pancreatic cancer, suffer from severe pain, and various methods and techniques have been used for relieving this pain. We present here two cases of patients with pancreatic cancer and they were both successfully relieved of their abdominal pain by performing video-assisted thoracoscopic sympathectomy and splanchnicectomy. This minimally invasive procedure offers promise in carefully selected patients with severe pain from pancreatic cancer and other conditions.
Abdominal Pain ; Humans ; Pain, Intractable ; Pancreatic Neoplasms ; Sympathectomy ; Thoracoscopy

We present a case of nucleus caudalis DREZ operation for medically refractory facial pain due to invasive sarcoma in skull base. The patient showed excellent pain relief immediately after the operation. Until 5 month later, the pain was less than before surgery. At the point of view of pain characteristics and distribution, it was considered the trigemino-vago-glossopharyngeal neuralgia. It is suggested that the nucleus caudalis DREZ operation is effective in treating medically refractory facial pain due to invasive sarcoma in skull base.
Facial Pain ; Humans ; Neuralgia ; Pain, Intractable* ; Sarcoma* ; Skull Base* ; Skull*

Since the early 1980s, the implantable intrathecal drug pump (ITDP) has been used increasingly to manage chronic pain. Prior to making a decision to implant an ITDP, trial administration of the intrathecal (IT) drug should be performed to estimate the effective dose for a starting set of implantable ITDPs. There is no standard method of trial IT drug administration, though. Therefore, this paper reports 20 cases of IT morphine trial with single and repetitive injections until the appropriate dose was attained with respect to analgesia and its side effects. The trial procedure was performed with daily sequential IT injections using morphine and 0.3% mepivacaine. Twelve out of the total of 20 patients had positive responses. Thus, it is inferred that daily sequential IT morphine injections combined with a placebo injection as a trial ITDP would be useful in evaluating the effectiveness and adverse effects of IT morphine infusion with clinically insignificant side effects.
Analgesia ; Chronic Pain ; Humans ; Mepivacaine ; Morphine ; Pain, Intractable