A case with intractable pain suffering from pancoast syndrome.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to B Wakasugi.
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To our knowledge, this is the first report of high-frequency thermocoagulation applied to the spinal root. We treated 34 patients suffering from cancer pain with this technique. Among these patients, cancer pain occurred due to intrapelvic metastasis in 11 patients, and 13 complained of chest pain due to cancer. Every patient was considered to have good or excellent response when his or her pain score was reduced to 6 points or less from the score before thermocoagulation; 10 points. Based on this criterion, 54.5% and 30.8% of the above-mentioned patients showed good and excellent responses respectively one month after treatment. This technique, therefore, was considered to be effective with less side effects compared with other nerve blocking techniques.
We examined three patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who did not respond to drug therapy and who were treated by stellate ganglion block (SGB) alone. The clinical symptoms improved by the SGB in all these three patients. There was no recurrence. The pathophysiological mechanism of this disease and the therapeutic efficacy of SGB should be elucidated with respect to the autonomic nervous, endocrine and immune systems. These results suggest that SGB therapy is effective for IBS, a typical psychosomatic disease.
We examined a 35-year-old male patient with recurrent tonsillitis who did not respond to operation and drug therapy and we treated him by stellate ganglion block (SGB) alone. The clinical symptoms improved by the SGB. There was no subsequent recurrence. The result suggests that SGB therapy is effective for recurrent tonsillitis.
We examined a 5-year-old boy with allergic rhinitis, chronic sinusitis, atopic dermatitis, and tendency to suffer common cold, who responded to stellate ganglion block (SGB). SGB therapy was extremely effective for this patient. The result suggests that SGB therapy should be performed on patients with allergic diseases resistant to drug and diet therapy. Furthermore, the indication for nerve block therapy, such as SGB, may be extended even to pediatric patients.
Of 2,667 patients with herpes zoster who visited our hospital between January 1972 and March 1989, 136 patients whose treatments were started after more than 6 months following the onset were subjects of the present study. Thus we performed a retrospective study of the therapeutic effects of sympathetic ganglion block (using alcohol) on postherpetic neuralgia left untreated for more than 6 months after the onset. After more than 1 year following the onset, the disease was nearly or completely cured in 9 of 37 patients (24%) treated with sympathetic ganglion block with alcohol and in 6 of 34 (17.6%) without the treatment. Thus the patients who underwent sympathetic ganglion block with alcohol tended to show better results. The above findings suggest that, in patients with postherpetic neuralgia in whom the initiation of treatment was delayed, treatment mainly consisting of thoracic or lumbar sympathetic ganglion block using alcohol in combination with antidepressants and antianxiety drugs can greatly improve patients' activities of daily life and that, at present, this method is most effective in relieving postherpetic neuralgia.
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The first pain clinic in Japan was organized and operated by anesthesiologists at the University of Tokyo. Today, many universities and large hospitals have set up pain clinics in their anesthetics department and have made great progress in the management of diseases in this filed. Almost all those institutions use oriental methods like acupuncture, ryodoraku and kyo in addition to standard methods. At our pain clinic, nerve block has been the sole method from the beginning. Neither drugs (except carbamazepine, imipramine and ergotamine) nor oriental methods have been used. The pain clinic ought to be separated from the anesthetics department and operated independently, having its own wards.
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