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Considerations for Evaluating the Use of Intrathecal Drug Delivery in the Oncologic Patient

  • Cancer Pain (D Marcus, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

While the majority of cancer pain patients are successfully managed with conservative medical management, some patients may suffer from intractable pain or intolerable side effects. The implantation of an intrathecal drug delivery system offers many advantages to improve both analgesia and side effect profile. Practitioners may decide to proceed toward implantation after appropriate patient selection, and, when applicable, a suitable trial for the device. Once implantation is completed, multiple medication combinations may be used to optimize the therapeutic benefit of the device. We describe a stepwise paradigm to implement an intrathecal drug delivery program in the cancer pain population.

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Conflict of Interest

Dr. Amitabh Gulati, Dr. Vinay Puttanniah, Dr. Joseph Hung, and Dr. Vivek Malhotra’s case report was funded by the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 10065, USA

    Amitabh Gulati, Vinay Puttanniah, Joseph Hung & Vivek Malhotra

Authors
  1. Amitabh Gulati
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  2. Vinay Puttanniah
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  3. Joseph Hung
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  4. Vivek Malhotra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amitabh Gulati.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Cancer Pain

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Gulati, A., Puttanniah, V., Hung, J. et al. Considerations for Evaluating the Use of Intrathecal Drug Delivery in the Oncologic Patient. Curr Pain Headache Rep 18, 391 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-013-0391-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-013-0391-2

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