Nicotine Patch Helps Relieve Post-Surgical Prostate Cancer Pain

In a case of something that was invented for one purpose turning out to be helpful in something entirely different, researchers at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina report that a nicotine patch, which was made to help smokers break the habit, has been found to have helped reduce pain in patients after prostate surgery.

The regular course of post operative treatment is administering morphine and other opioids (narcotics), but there is always the fear of side effects from these types of medications, which can include drowsiness, nausea, slowed breathing, vomiting, constipation, itching and dependence and many patients would rather deal with having pain than with any of these side effects.

The participants in the study were 90 non-smoking men who were all about to undergo a radical retropubic prostatectomy. Each one was given a 7-milligram nicotine patch or an identical placebo patch before anesthesia and surgery. The patients were able to administer their own morphine after surgery and decide how much they needed by using a self controlled device.

The results showed th patients who had received the real nicotine patch self-administered a much lower level of morphine than those who received the placebo, but they also reported having much higher levels of nausea.

There have been studies done in the past that have proven the pain relief abilities of nicotine. For instance, in one of the studies, a small dose of nicotine, just 3 milligrams, was given after surgery to hysterectomy patients, but they used a nicotine spray, not a patch. The patients reported less pain and less of a need for morphine.

They are planing on future studies that will look at finding a way to determine which way is the better way to administer nicotine, by patch or by spray. They also want to see how effective the nicotine treatment would be in patients who are smokers. And also to see if there is any difference in the effectiveness between men and women.

Another thing that needs to be looked into is the testing of different size doses in the patch to find the exact level of nicotine that can provide the most pain relief without a high degree of side effects, or better yet. no side effects at all.

The lead researcher on the project is Ashraf S. Habib, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology and director of quality improvement, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina.

Source: American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) http://www.newswise.com/