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P A I N
M A N A G E M E N T
SUSTAINED RELIEF
Pain, Pain, Go Away — For Several Days
NO NARCOTICS NEEDED In an independent study, patients who were given
Exparel experienced only minimal pain for 72 hours
after surgery.
When Dennis Feierman, PhD, MD, talks about post-operative pain with hernia repair, he can relate. He underwent his first hernia surgery more than 25 years ago and the agonizing memory is still vivid.
"Normally, a good block can provide 6 to 8 hours of pain relief," says Dr. Feierman, vice chairman of academic affairs in the division of anesthesiology at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. After that, of course, the painful reality of invasive surgery sets in. And managing it typically requires a significant dose of narcotics.
That's changed, thanks to recent advances with the analgesic Exparel. The injectable drug encapsulates bupivacaine in DepoFoam lipid membranes, which erode and reorganize over time. The result: Bupivacaine is released at various intervals over a period of days.
Dr. Feierman, the lead investigator of an independent hernia pain control study of the drug's efficacy, was extremely impressed by what he saw.
"In our study, patients who were given
Exparel were asked to rate the pain on a 0-10 scale with 0 being no pain at all, and 10 being the worst imaginable pain," he says. "After 72 hours, the average rating was 1.6. When it finally wears off, after about 72 hours, most
