Interventional anesthesia and palliative care collaboration to manage cancer pain: a narrative review

Pain is a common symptom associated with advanced cancer. An estimated 66.4% of people with advanced cancer experience pain from their disease or treatment. Pain management is an essential component of palliative care. Opioids and adjuvant therapies are the mainstay of cancer pain management. Nevertheless, a proportion of patients may experience complex pain that is not responsive to conventional analgesia. Interventional analgesia procedures may be appropriate and necessary to manage complex, cancer-related pain. This narrative review uses a theoretical case to highlight core principles of palliative care and interventional anesthesia, and the importance of collaborative, interdisciplinary care. An overview and discussion of pragmatic considerations of peripheral nervous system interventional analgesic procedures and neuraxial analgesia infusions are provided.

Advanced implantable drug delivery technologies: transforming the clinical landscape of therapeutics for chronic diseases

Chronic diseases account for the majority of all deaths worldwide, and their prevalence is expected to escalate in the next 10 years. Because chronic disorders require long-term therapy, the healthcare system must address the needs of an increasing number of patients. The use of new drug administration routes, specifically implantable drug delivery devices, has the potential to reduce treatment-monitoring clinical visits and follow-ups with healthcare providers. Also, implantable drug delivery devices can be designed to maintain drug concentrations in the therapeutic window to achieve controlled, continuous release of therapeutics over extended periods, eliminating the risk of patient non-compliance to oral treatment. A higher local drug concentration can be achieved if the device is implanted in the affected tissue, reducing systemic adverse side effects and decreasing the challenges and discomfort of parenteral treatment. Although implantable drug delivery devices have existed for some time, interest in their therapeutic potential is growing, with a global market expected to reach over $12 billion USD by 2018. This review discusses implantable drug delivery technologies in an advanced stage of development or in clinical use and focuses on the state-of-the-art of reservoir-based implants including pumps, electromechanical systems, and polymers, sites of implantation and side effects, and deployment in developing countries.

Efficient CNS targeting in adult mice by intrathecal infusion of single-stranded AAV9-GFP for gene therapy of neurological disorders

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy constitutes a powerful tool for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. While AAVs are generally administered systemically to newborns in preclinical studies of neurological disorders, in adults the maturity of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) must be considered when selecting the route of administration. Delivery of AAVs into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) represents an attractive approach to target the central nervous system (CNS) and bypass the BBB. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of intra-CSF delivery of a single-stranded (ss) AAV9-CAG-GFP vector in adult mice via intracisternal (iCist) or intralumbar (it-Lumb) administration. It-Lumb ssAAV9 delivery resulted in greater diffusion throughout the entire spinal cord and green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression mainly in the cerebellum, cortex and olfactory bulb. By contrast, iCist delivery led to strong GFP expression throughout the entire brain. Comparison of the transduction efficiency of ssAAV9-CAG-GFP versus ssAAV9-SYN1-GFP following it-Lumb administration revealed widespread and specific GFP expression in neurons and motoneurons of the spinal cord and brain when the neuron-specific synapsin 1 (SYN1) promoter was used. Our findings demonstrate that it-Lumb ssAAV9 delivery is a safe and highly efficient means of targeting the CNS in adult mice.

The Application of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis Methodology to Intrathecal Drug Delivery for Pain Management

Objective

This study aimed to utilize failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) to transform clinical insights into a risk mitigation plan for intrathecal (IT) drug delivery in pain management.

Methods

The FMEA methodology, which has been used for quality improvement, was adapted to assess risks (i.e., failure modes) associated with IT therapy. Ten experienced pain physicians scored 37 failure modes in the following categories: patient selection for therapy initiation (efficacy and safety concerns), patient safety during IT therapy, and product selection for IT therapy. Participants assigned severity, probability, and detection scores for each failure mode, from which a risk priority number (RPN) was calculated. Failure modes with the highest RPNs (i.e., most problematic) were discussed, and strategies were proposed to mitigate risks.

Results

Strategic discussions focused on 17 failure modes with the most severe outcomes, the highest probabilities of occurrence, and the most challenging detection. The topic of the highest‐ranked failure mode (RPN = 144) was manufactured monotherapy versus compounded combination products. Addressing failure modes associated with appropriate patient and product selection was predicted to be clinically important for the success of IT therapy.

Conclusions

The methodology of FMEA offers a systematic approach to prioritizing risks in a complex environment such as IT therapy. Unmet needs and information gaps are highlighted through the process. Risk mitigation and strategic planning to prevent and manage critical failure modes can contribute to therapeutic success.

Advanced Innovations for Pain

Chronic pain represents one of the most important public health problems in terms of both the number of patients afflicted and health care costs. Most patients with chronic pain are treated with medications as the mainstay of therapy, and yet most medically treated patients continue to report ongoing pain. Additionally, adverse effects from pain medications represent a major challenge for clinicians and patients. Spinal cord stimulation and intrathecal drug delivery systems are well-established techniques that have been utilized for over 25 years. Intrathecal drug delivery systems have proven efficacy for a wide variety of intractable pain conditions and fewer adverse effects than systemic medical therapy in patients with refractory cancer-related pain. Spinal cord stimulation is cost-effective and provides improved pain control compared with medical therapy in patients with a variety of refractory pain conditions including complex regional pain syndrome, painful diabetic neuropathy, and chronic radiculopathy. Patients who have intractable pain that has not responded to reasonable attempts at conservative pain care measures should be referred to a qualified interventional pain specialist to determine candidacy for the procedures discussed in this article.