J Korean Pain Soc.
1991 Nov;4(2):122-126.
Cancer Pain Management with Epidural Tunnelling
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Anesthesiology, Keimyung University, School of Medicine, Taegu, Korea.
Abstract
- Continuous epidural analgesia with intermittent morphine injection is a good technique for the management of intractabie cancer pain. Since epidural tunnelling was introduced for the first time to our institution in 1988, it has been widely used for the cancer pain management. Recently epidural tunnelling was introduced for the keeping an inserted catheter for a long period of time. Twenty-five patients with terminal cancer had been used an epidural tunnelling at the pain clinic of Dongsan Medical Center during the period of 3 months in 1991. Among the 25 patients, l4 were male and 11 were female, and most of them were at the ages of 6th decade. The causes of pain were from stomach cancer in l2, CBD cancer in 3, hepatoma in 2, pancreatic cancer in 2, uterine cervical cancer in 2, and miscellaneous cancer in 4 cases respectively. The outcome of treatment were excellent results in 14 (56%), good in 9 (36% ), and moderate in 2.patients (8%). Accordingly satisfactory pain relief was achieved in 92% of the patients. It is suggested that this long-term management of intractable cancer pain by epidural bupivacaine and morphine with epidural tunnelling is satisfactory and reliable.
