CO2 Monitoring Study

Brief summary (from the registry)

Opioids are an effective instrument for patients with acute and chronic pain. Their route of administration ranges from transdermal to subcutaneous application through to Intravenous Patient-Controlled Analgesia (IV-PCA). The use of IV-PCA-pumps has considerable advantages including decreased delay in the administration of opioids from the time requested, individual dose intervals, self -control of their therapy, rapidity and ease of dose titration . These potential benefits, however are balanced by the need for careful assessment of adverse effects, including decreased quality of life because of the patient's sedation, constipation and possible episodes of bradypnoea and desaturation, eventually leading to respiratory depression (RD) requiring treatment. Often described safety features that help prevent overdosing are PCA bolus dose, delay, and lockout interval. Even though the risk of serious, potentially life threatening complications by using IV-PCA without a background infusion was described to be very low (0.24%) compared to other methods of opioid delivery , adverse effects like worrying degrees of hypoxemia and bradypnoea do occur and often remain undetected due to the lack of continuous monitoring. One of the possible causes of patient harm are medication errors associated with PCA administration, a common form of PCA errors, which is a significant source of preventable patient morbidity and hospital resource utilization. The individual patient response to a particular dose of opioids depends on diagnosed or unrecognized comorbidities. Clinical experience has shown that it is not possible to prospectively identify all patients who may be at increased risk. Conventional opioid monitoring protocol may fail to detect frequent episodes of bradypnoea and desaturation measured by the respiratory rate (RR) and Saturation of Peripheral Oxygen (SpO2) because even at a low respiratory rate SpO2 is usually maintained, so that pulse oxymetry might fail to detect respir…

Study details

Official title

Continuous Monitoring of Patients Treated With Opioids for Chronic Pain and Its Impact on Patient Safety. A Feasibility Trial.

Conditions

• Chronic Pain
• Hypercapnia
• Quality of Life

Sponsor

Cantonal Hospital, Baselland

Start date

2013-09

Primary completion

2017-01

Sex

All

Age range

from 18 Years

Results posted

No results posted in this snapshot

Countries

Switzerland

Total sites listed

1

Eligibility criteria