Postoperative Pain Management with Disposable Patient-Controlled Epidural Analgesia (PCEA) Pump: Epidural 0.2% Ropivacaine with Fentanyl Following Major Surgery

Abstract

  Postoperative pain management by patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) involving the administration of local anesthetics and low-dose opioids has been reported to be available to patients. Electrical PCEA pumps have high performance and are useful for postoperative pain management following major surgeries. However, their introduction and maintenance are associated with considerable costs. On the other hand, disposable PCEA pumps are not that expensive with regard to their introduction and maintenance. Furthermore, the cost of disposable PCEA pumps can be claimed from National Health Insurance agencies. Therefore, many hospitals have adopted the use of disposable PCEA pumps. However, these pumps are inferior to electrical pumps with respect to performance. We overcome these weaknesses of disposable pumps by using various ideas.
  In this paper, we discuss the formulation designed by us that contains high concentrations of ropivacaine and low doses of fentanyl and the improvement in PCEA efficacy achieved by using disposable pumps.