ON-Q Pain Pump Side Effects – Working And Its Effects On The Body!

ON-Q is a medical device that is used to relieve your pain after surgery. It has a small disposable pump filled with a local anesthetic medication which can help you with pain after surgery. It has specially designed catheters that continuously deliver local anesthetic to or near the surgical site. This device is specially designed to provide patients with targeted pain relief after major surgery. This is a product marketed by Avanos, a medical device company headquartered in Georgia.

Traditionally opioids such as morphine injections or pain pills are used to relieve pain. These kinds of drugs mostly affect your entire body instead of targeting the actual area of your surgery. These can cause harmful side effects and they may actually prevent you from getting back to normal faster.

How Will ON-Q Pain Pump Work On Your Pains?

Narcotics such as morphine or codeine are commonly used to treat pain after a medical procedure like surgery. These drugs are known to cause side effects such as breathing difficulty, nausea, vomiting, and constipation.

These drugs can also make you sleepy and foggy. Other potential side effects of opioids include a higher chance of intense pain spikes, a slower recovery, and a higher chance of opioid addiction.

Pain pumps are a clinically proven technology to manage pain. It gives pain relief up to five days after surgery. There are mainly two types of pain pumps that are used for pain relief. They are elastomeric and electronic pain pumps. ON-Q is an elastomeric pain pump. They are small disposable pumps that continuously deliver local anesthetic medication to block pain at the site of surgery.

As the medication is used, the pump ball will gradually become smaller. This is a completely portable device and can be clipped to your clothing or can be placed in a small carrying case. Electronic pain pumps are small and lightweight pumps that deliver local anesthetic medication to relieve pain after surgery. These electronic pumps block pain in the area of the surgical procedure by continuously and intermittently delivering medication at the programmed rate. Electronic pain pumps and medication bags are fully portable and can be placed in a small carry case.

ON-Q Pain Pump – Is It Portable?

A pain pump is a better choice for pain relief than opioids such as morphine, codeine, or other pain pills. Unlike narcotics, pain pumps are local anesthetics that numb a targeted site. As they do not affect the entire body, there is less risk of harmful side effects. Local anesthetics have been used for years for various surgeries and dental procedures. ON-Q pain relief system is a non-narcotic option that is tailored to your needs.

Opioid painkillers and short-duration single-shot nerve blocks may affect your surgical outcomes and patient experiences. ON-Q pain pump offers a complete solution for keeping pain management from compromising your surgical result. It provides over three days of predictable pain relief while reducing opioid use.

Patients can feel comfortable after the surgery which can lead to active recovery. Opioid use is very dangerous as it leads to a deadly addiction. Addiction can begin within 3 days of opioid usage. By using ON-Q Pain Pump, you can significantly reduce opioid intake and can provide better pain relief than opioids alone.

ON-Q Pain Pump comes with a controller that can control the flow rate of analgesics. The flow rate can be changed according to patients’ pain relief requirements. It automatically and continuously delivers local anesthetic. It can provide postoperative pain relief for as long as five days while reducing the intake of opioids after surgery.

This elastomeric pump has the capacity for customizable control with titrability and the ability to turn analgesia on and off. Those who used the ON-Q pain relief system went home an average of 1.1 days sooner. Patients reported 69 percent lower pain scores. Users of the ON-Q Pain Pump were up to three times as likely to report high satisfaction scores.

They are also more likely to experience better pain management with fewer side effects. ON-Q also has a bolus device that allows for breakthrough pain relief on demand by the patient or the physician. It provides targeted pain relief for up to three to five days by delivering a regulated flow of local anesthetic to the patient’s surgical site or in close proximity to the nerves. It is available in a variety of volumes and flow rates.

ON-Q Pain Relief Pump – How Long Does It Last?

ON-Q is a type of infusion pump or intrathecal pump. These kinds of pain pumps are useful in relieving pain by targeted delivery of anesthetics. But it can also have adverse effects on our bodies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has alerted healthcare professionals and patients about the serious complications that can happen when using medications that are not approved for use with implanted pain pumps that deliver medication to the site of the surgery or spinal fluid to treat or manage pain.

Complications may include errors in the dosage, failure of the pump, opioid withdrawal, and infection. On=Q Pain Pump may also have complications like pain, fever, muscle spasms, vomiting, cognitive changes, weakness, and cardiac or respiratory distress.

Pain pumps directly deliver anesthetics to spinal fluids and other key areas of the nervous system. Thus their use must be judicious and their instructions for use must be carefully followed.

Drugs used for intrathecal administration must satisfy additional safety standards over those drugs administered in other ways because the spinal cord and brain tissue are highly sensitive to preservatives or infectious organisms like bacteria or viruses. This can lead to serious complications. Using medications that are not approved can cause undesirable side effects and may fail to deliver adequate pain relief for some patients.

Using anesthetics that are not approved for use with these pumps may lead to serious risks to the patients due to pump failure or dosage errors. Some medications may contain preservatives or other properties that can potentially damage the tubing of the pump or can cause corrosion to the pumping mechanism. This can cause abnormal functioning of the pump. It may even stop working and cause failure in medication delivery and can lead to potential opioid withdrawal.

Sometimes there is a chance for the medication to leak out of the point it is attached to the body. If a significant amount of leakage happens, change the wet dressing. Be careful not to pull out the tubes. There are other possible side effects such as shortness of breath, headache, blurred vision, and a metallic taste in your mouth.

If you feel shortness of breath, you must go to ER and immediately contact your doctor. Headache or blurred vision may be the side effect of medication used in the ON-Q Pain Pump or some other medication that was prescribed.

Many other complications of using infusion pump systems like ON-Q were reported to the FDA. These mainly include tissue necrosis, surgical wound infection, and cellulitis. Tissue necrosis is the most commonly reported adverse effect of infusion pumps. It requires urgent medical intervention or else will cause more serious complications.

Conclusion On ON-Q Pain Pump

ON-Q Pain Pump is a type of infusion pump system that makes targeted delivery of anesthetics to the area of surgical incision. It has many advantages over traditional pain-relieving methods. It only affects the targeted parts of the body and does not affect the entire body.

But like any other medical device, it too has some side effects. We have discussed them in detail. If such side effects become complicated, immediately consult your doctor and get the pain pump removed from the body. Then you will have to follow the traditional methods of pain relief such as morphine and codeine.