I was very hesitant to post this at all it was more than I was ever expecting. It was however enough to get them to do independent specialized testing of the medications shelf-life! I agreed to hold all of my documents, charts, and specialized testing until their test confirms or contradicts our numbers. So the waiting game is on again. Mostly because I don’t want to get sued! 😉 it actually explains a lot to a lot of people! Hydromorphone was tested twice straight from the pump! FDA at their finest! Now we may know why these medications were not approved! I don’t know why fentanyl was not approved for at least for 2 months. Seeing the average patient goes in every 6 weeks!
At 3 months the results as followed:
Hydromorphone
1 month. 91%- 86%
2 months 71%-76%
3 months 62%-67%
loss of its original potency in medication
3 month:
Fentanyl:
1 month: 97%-99%
2 month: 89%- 93%
3 month: 50%- 53%
I have always questioned the stability of compounded meds put in implanted pumps… the only study that I had seen was from Medtronics and the commercial Morphine Infumorph and their studies suggested that it is at least 90% potency stable for six months in vivo.
While these figures seem to be from a very small sampling, but suggests that compounded meds put into a implanted pump … their potency stability will not approach those of the commercial products.
What is not known about these pts is if the pt was – or was not – warned about using a heating pad, hot tub or some other external heat source that could cause the medication to be raised above the normal body temp of 98.6 F. That could possibly be detrimental to the potency of the med.
Meds that are infused into the spinal fluid not only has to be STERILE, they must be a SOLUTION and PRESERVATIVE FREE.
each time a implanted pump is refilled… it is an invasive procedure with the sterile spinal fluid and more times a pump has to be refilled the more chances of someone accidentally breaking a sterile field and the pt ends up with some sort of meningitis or infection in the spinal fluid. So the more stable the med is in the pump and the fewer times that it has to be refilled… the better/safer it is for the pt.
Filed under: General Problems
My husband had two life-threatening infections from a medtronics implanted pain pump. He has since died from undiagnosed cancer.
The pain pump was for intractable pain due to radiation damage from prostate cancer. Or so they said. In reality it was bladder cancer that they completely missed. Reading this makes me heartsick. They lied to us and told us he had a reaction to the material that was used to attach the pump to the nerve root. I would bet money that the horrific suffering he went through with those infections was totally unnecessary. He said that each time his pump was refilled, they injected the same needle several times into the site and it was always painful! If they are filling a container, why was it painful? They had to be missing the site. My husband suffered tremendously, and a little needle was nothing for him.
He continually went through with drawls with the pain pump. They accused him of wanting more medicine to get high. The man didn’t even drink alcohol! He just wanted to be out of pain!!