More than 70 million patients worldwide undergo surgery each year.
Inadequately controlled postoperative pain can lead to:
- Longer hospital stays
- Increased use of opioid medications
- Slower recoveries
- Serious complications
There is a clear unmet need for a local analgesic with a prolonged duration of action. The ideal product should provide coverage for more than the first few days following surgery when pain is most debilitating. A long acting local analgesic is expected to provide the following clinical and economic advantages:
- A single perioperative administration requiring no further intervention from nurses, anesthetists, or surgeons for the treatment of pain
- No need for infusion pumps, catheters, etc., which might fail or complicate patient movement
- Opioid sparing, which means the potential for less narcotic side effects
- Potential for earlier mobility following surgery, and therefore faster and easier rehabilitation
- Earlier discharge from the hospital
- Potential to convert some in-patient surgeries to outpatient surgery by avoiding the need for post-operative parenteral narcotics