Local Therapeutic Delivery for Nonopioid Pain Management in Musculoskeletal Injury
Abstract
Musculoskeletal injuries are the most common cause of evacuations of active military personnel and a very significant factor in the lives of the civilian population. The gold standard for relieving pain is intravenous opioids, commonly morphine. In the few weeks after surgery, opioid therapy is only about 70% effective in addition to inducing side effects such as respiratory depression, sedation, and nausea. In the long term, the incidence of chronic pain, which can be extremely limiting to patients’ quality of life, is especially high in the military and Veteran populations. Chronic pain necessitates longer-term use of opiates such as morphine; patients who have used opioids for a longer duration are at higher risk of prolonged use and addiction, which is quickly becoming an epidemic. There is a great need to investigate and adopt rational alternative therapies to relieve pain and reduce opioid usage. In this project, we propose to locally deliver non-opioid pain killers after fracture fixation surgery or joint replacement to ease pain more effectively and to reduce opioid usage systemically. Our approach is to develop injectable and load-bearing polymeric devices for delivering pain medicine most suitable to applying in environments relevant to military and Veteran personnel. We have also found that some pain killers can act as antibiotics, which may help in reducing the rate of infection after these surgeries. This is very promising because infection rates can be as high as 20% in some trauma cases. If successful, this project will give alternative tools to surgeons to manage patients’ pain after surgery in both military and civilian populations. In addition, the project will result in new non-antibiotic strategies for infection prevention. Overall, both of these results imply a significant improvement to patients’ quality of life.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 29, 2018
- Source ID
- W81XWH1710614
Entities
People
- Ebru Oral
Organizations
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- United States Army