During cancer treatment, managing pain can be difficult. For patients unable to control their pain with medication or find the side-effects too severe, an Intrathecal Pain Pump may be the right option. The pump can present a solution to help deliver medications more effectively and efficiently manage a person’s pain by delivering the medication directly to the central nervous system bypassing the gut in the case of oral medications or the circulatory system in the case of intravenous medications.

Intrathecal pain pumps or intrathecal medication delivery systems are programmable pumps implanted in the body to provide timed and efficient delivery of pain medication. These pumps are implanted underneath the skin with a catheter or tube extending into the spinal canal. Intrathecal pumps release drugs directly into the spinal fluid surrounding the signaling nerve pathways of the spinal cord, resulting in the patients needing much lower doses of medications like morphine or opioids (as little as one thousandth of a traditional oral dose).

Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) provides electrical stimuli to the spinal cord to change or modulate pain signals before they can be interpreted by the brain. After a trial to test whether this treatment is effective is performed, a programmable battery is inserted underneath the skin that is connected to cables or leads extending into the spinal canal where the spinal cord is situated. This treatment may be the right choice for people who no longer respond to medications or have no other surgical options for the treatment of their cancer pain.