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dosing and electronic medication delivery. With those features, Dr. Ivie would be
able to determine how much local anesthetic is administered and how many
demand doses are used during the initial days of at-home recovery.
Dr. Elkassabany believes the cost of advanced pain pumps is offset by the
clinical benefits they provide and the data they capture. "If you know patients
use 50 pills of Percocet over a period of 4 days before you start your pain pump
program, and 10 to 20 pills afterward, you've demonstrated value," he says.
Surgical facilities should launch a pain pump pilot program to collect data on how
the devices improve pain control after a single type of surgery before expanding
their use to other procedures, according to Dr. Elkassabany.
Patients might soon be able to download apps that are linked to the pumps
they receive, points out Dr. Adhikary. The apps would let patients record
how much pain they're experiencing, how much medication they've received
from the pump, any numbness or tingling they might be experiencing around
the infusion site and how much ambulating they've done since arriving home
— basically any information their anesthesia providers and surgeons would
need to monitor their condition and improve the management of their recov-
ery.
The pain that patients experience changes from post-op day 1 to post-op day
4, and they might not need as much numbing medicine from one day to the
next, says Dr. Adhikary. With the data collected from smart pumps, providers
could potentially dial back the rates for different post-op days or program the
pumps to deliver boluses every 4 hours instead of every hour. "In that way," he
says, "effective pain management with the same amount of medication might
last longer. Data collected from pumps could significantly improve future pain
management protocols."
OSM
