Pain Management in Chronic Limb Threatening Ischaemia: A Multi-centre Cross-Sectional Study - PubMed
6 days ago
- #Pain Management
- #Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischaemia
- #Analgesics
- Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischaemia (CLTI) involves persistent ischaemic rest pain lasting two weeks or more.
- Pain management in CLTI patients remains challenging, with the WHO analgesic ladder potentially leading to suboptimal relief and side effects.
- A cross-sectional study across two hospitals evaluated pain management using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) score.
- 104 patients (median age 69; 64.4% male) reported median current pain of 5/10 and worst pain of 8/10 in the last 24 hours.
- 80.7% of patients reported moderate to severe pain (≥5/10), with inadequate pain relief in 39.6% despite widespread use of paracetamol and strong opioids.
- Pain interfered with general activity (76.7%), mood (67.0%), mobility (83.5%), and sleep (73.6%) in most patients.
- 14.2% of patients with severe pain (≥7/10) had no strong opioid documented, and 6.3% received no paracetamol.
- The study concludes that pain management for CLTI inpatients is inadequate, negatively affecting nearly all aspects of life.
- Lack of research and understanding of ischaemic pain mechanisms likely contributes to poor pain management.
- Urgent further research is needed to establish evidence-based analgesic strategies specific to ischaemic pain.