The management of chronic pain can be very challenging. Often, physicians employ intrathecal (IT) drug delivery systems as a last resort to relieve intractable pain. The system consists of an implantable pump that stores and delivers medication through a catheter to the IT space. Programmability is achieved by positioning an external devise over the implanted pump to change the mode of drug del...

Providing analgesia in the latent phase of labor can be challenging. Many obstetricians and nurse midwives believe that epidural analgesia initiated too early in the course of labor can prolong labor and result in fetal malpresentation, thus increasing the need for instrumentation. Many practitioners therefore use the combined spinal-epidural technique with intrathecal opioids during the early ...

BACKGROUND Adequate analgesia following caesarean section decreases morbidity, hastens ambulation, improves patient outcome and facilitates care of the newborn. Intrathecal magnesium, an NMDA antagonist, has been shown to prolong analgesia without significant side effects in healthy parturients. We therefore studied the effect of adding intrathecal magnesium sulphate to bupivacaine-fentanyl spi...

Major traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) results in permanent paralysis below the site of injury. The effectiveness of systemically delivered pharmacological therapies against SCI can be limited by the blood-spinal cord barrier and side effects. Local drug delivery to the injured spinal cord can be achieved using a minimally invasive biopolymer matrix of hyaluronan and methylcellulose injected ...

Regional anaesthesia is associated with significantlly lower mortality among obstetric patients, but the optimal technique for delivery and cesarean section remains to be determined. Conventional epidural analgesia has disadvantage of slow onset and higher rate of instrumental delivery while spinal anaesthesia in standard doses causes hypotension and bradycardia which might further compromise c...

Neural precursor cells (NPCs) are promising grafts for treatment of traumatic CNS injury and neurodegenerative disorders because of their potential to differentiate into neurons and glial cells. When designing clinical protocols for NPC transplantation, it is important to develop alternatives to direct parenchymal injection, particularly at the injury site. We reasoned that since it is minimall...

BACKGROUND Intrathecal opioid administration has been used widely in patients suffering from severe cancer pain that is not managed with conventional modalities. However, the potential serious neurological complications from the procedure and the side effects of intrathecal opioids have made many clinicians reluctant to employ continuous intrathecal analgesia as a first-line therapeutic option ...

BACKGROUND Intrathecal morphine for caesarean delivery provides excellent postoperative analgesia but it is commonly associated with nausea and vomiting. This prospective, randomized, double blind study was carried out to compare the effectiveness of a combination of dexamethasone and ondansetron with dexamethasone alone for prevention of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) following intra...