Pump your own morphine for better pain relief

CHENNAI: Your doctor might agree to give you a shot of morphine to numb that excruciating after-surgery pain, but you can't keep asking for more every time the pain shoots up. The new morphine pump, claimed to have been introduced in south India for the first time, is guaranteed to keep both you and your physician happy. Not only does it vastly reduce the dosage of morphine that is injected, the pump actually gives the patient control of when the 'shots' of morphine are released, as and when you feel stabs of pain.This will be particularly useful for those who suffer agony after a failed back surgery or cancer patients in the secondary stage. Going by the WHO’s Analgesic ladder guidelines, for patients who are experiencing chronic pain, for whom every other pain treatment has failed, this Intrathecal Morphine Pump is not just a new procedure but also a very effective one, said Dr Ram Narayan, Functional Neurosurgeon, Apollo Hospitals. While morphine, one of the most powerful pain killers, has been ingested orally all these years, in this procedure, a pump which can hold a volume of 41 ml of morphine will be fixed under the skin in the lower abdomen. A small tube will take the drug straight into the Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) which surrounds the brain and the spinal cord resulting in pain relief. This morphine pump is controlled externally by a wireless switch similar to the computer mouse, which can be handheld by the patient themselves. While this may raise questions about overdosing, it has been clearly specified that the pump is programmed not to release more than the prescribed dose.A screening to find the right dosage for the respective patient and the impact of side effects is done initially. Only after that, the dosage is fixed and the procedure is carried out.Explaining the effectiveness of the pump in pain management when compared to oral morphine, Ram Narayan said, “The dosages taken orally are much higher. For instance, let us say, a person is taking 200 mg of morphine a day in  oral treatment, with the pump, the same person will  need only one Milligram a day for the same amount of pain relief.” As it is a targeted treatment, the drug dosage is less. So obviously, the side effects are less, he reasoned.