Why use Patient-Controlled Analgesia Instrument?

You could be experiencing pain on the wound or certain area of the body after surgery or due to other diseases. Usually the duration of these symptoms vary according to the severity of the disease and the state of recovery. For example, patients receiving surgery will have more serious pain on the first 3 days after surgery and the situation will gradually improve.

Common pain symptoms are usually controlled by taking oral medicine, muscular injection or intravenous pain medications. However, the effect and duration of pain relief is usually variable and under-expectation. Hence, the adverse effect due to pain delays your recovery. To more effectively dispose pain, we suggest you to consider the use of “Patient-Controlled Analgesia”, which abbreviated as PCA.

What are the advantages of using Patient-Controlled Analgesia?

Pain is a highly subjective perception and only the person experiencing it could perceive precisely. When you perceive unbearable pain, you can immediately get relieved through triggering the button on the machine. The analgesia will start working in 3 minutes after the medication been injected and you will perceive gradual pain reduction.

You can press the button of PCA instrument 5 minutes before dressing change, coughing, taking deep breath, rolling, getting up, chest care, or rehabilitation, to prevent the discomfort caused by these motions and without asking the nurses and waiting for doctors’ new prescription.

With the help of proper pain relief, you may get off the bed to move around and this will prevent the occurrence of post-surgery complications (i.e. fever and even pneumonia or myocardial ischemia), which facilitates the implementation of other treatment (i.e. rehabilitation, breathing treatment, dressing change, and cancer treatment). It will also help patients with quick recovery and improvement on living quality in addition to early discharge from the hospital.

Is it safe to use Patient-Controlled Analgesia Instrument?

PCA instrument has been available for years. The individual patient determines the dose of use with multiple control measures enhancing medication safety through built-in computer program. Nonetheless the administration of painkiller concurrently via other means will need to take consideration of the interaction between medicines.

For how long will I need to use Patient-Controlled Analgesia?

The time of usage for patient-controlled analgesia is determined by the course of disease and length of pain. In general, the pain after surgery will be reduced as time passes and will less likely depend on the help of patient-controlled analgesia in 2~3 days. The pain caused by other cancer or non-cancer chronic diseases could also be improved through patient-controlled analgesia. The time of use mainly depends on the individual.

Will I get addicted to it?

The drug inside the patient-controlled analgesia instrument is morphine-like drug that can be administered under physician evaluation and prescription due to the short term use. Hence without the consolidation of other painkiller, the possibility of addiction is simply negligible.

What are the side effects to Patient-Controlled Analgesia Instrument?

The main side effects of patient-controlled analgesia come from medicine and are similar to the side effects of traditional syringe analgesia. However the concept of separate administration of patient-controlled analgesia will minimize side effects. Approximately 10% of the patients will experience symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vomiting, or skin itch.

What can be done about the side effects that come with the Patient-Controlled Analgesia?

You can do something about the side effects of patient-controlled analgesia and you do not need to endure the pain to avoid the side effects. Enduring pain without doing anything about it could on contrary produce complications and slow down the recovery process.