The Point-of-Care Peritoneal Dialysis System Early Evaluation Study (POC-PDEE): A pilot proof-of-principal study of the Ellen Medical Devices Point-of-Care affordable peritoneal dialysis system.

The global unmet need for kidney replacement therapy means that millions of people die every year as they cannot afford treatment. Peritoneal dialysis (PD) offers comparable survival to haemodialysis and is often more affordable, but one barrier to increasing access is that conventional manufacturing and distribution of PD fluid is costly. Here we report the results from a pilot proof-of-principal study demonstrating for the first time that the Ellen Medical Devices Point-of-Care system can be used by patients to produce sterile PD fluid at the point-of-care. With further development, this low-cost system could offer a solution to the many millions of people around the world who currently cannot afford treatment for kidney failure.

Patient Engagement Using New Technology to Improve Adherence to Positive Airway Pressure Therapy: A Retrospective Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Sleep apnea has major neurocognitive and cardiovascular and metabolic risks. Treatment of sleep apnea is suboptimal because of variable adherence to existing therapies. METHODS: This trial compared positive airway pressure adherence among patients who were provided active patient engagement (APE) technology vs those who received usual care monitoring (UCM). The primary outcome was expressed by using the US Medicare definition of adherence. Adherence data from two cloud-based databases (AirView and myAir) were analyzed for patients with sleep apnea. Data were included if a patient's activation date in the APE tool was within 7 days of the therapy start date in the UCM database during a defined time window. Data were propensity matched in a 1:2 ratio (APE:UCM) based on baseline patient characteristics. RESULTS: A total of 128,037 patients were analyzed. Baseline characteristics were typical of a sleep clinic cohort. APE was associated with more patients achieving adherence criteria (87.3%) compared with UCM patients (70.4%; P < .0001 for the difference). Average therapy usage was 5.9 h per night in the APE group vs 4.9 h per night in the matched UCM patients (P < .0001). Patients with sleep apnea "struggling" with therapy adherence had a 17.6% absolute improvement in adherence using APE compared with UCM. CONCLUSIONS: Robust therapy adherence rates can be achieved by adding modern technology to usual care. Adopting advances in technology in care management may allow clinicians to more effectively and efficiently treat patients who have sleep apnea. Rigorous randomized controlled trials may be required before making strong clinical recommendations.

Perioperative pain control.

There are many options for perioperative pain control available to surgeons. Given these options, adequate levels of analgesia should be achieved and maintained in all surgical patients. Data suggest that analgesia may be improved by combining different analgesic approaches. To avoid high-dose requirements, dose-dependent adverse effects, and potential toxicity associated with reliance on one agent or technique, "balanced" or multimodal analgesic regimens have been advocated. A multimodal recovery program consists of three major components: (1) early mobilization, (2) complete perioperative analgesia, and (3) early oral nutrition. The goal of multimodal programs is to accelerate patient rehabilitation and reduce hospital stays. Balanced multimodal programs are the present and future of perioperative pain control and will enhance patient care.

Painful neuropathy: altered central processing maintained dynamically by peripheral input.

We performed sensory assessments before and during diagnostic tourniquet-cuff and local anesthetic blocks in 4 patients diagnosed with reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD). All patients complained of mechano-allodynia; lightly touching the skin evoked an intense pain sensation. At detection levels, electrical stimuli were perceived as painful, suggesting that the mechano-allodynia was mediated by A beta low-threshold mechanoreceptor afferents. A beta-mediated allodynia was further supported by reaction time latencies to painful electrical stimuli at threshold for A-fiber activation and, in 1 patient, by differential cuff blocks which abolished A beta function and allodynia while thermal sensation (warm and cold) were preserved. Local anesthetic block of painful foci associated with previous trauma abolished mechano-allodynia, cold allodynia, and spontaneous pain in all patients and relieved the motor symptoms in 1 patient with tonic contractures of the toes. Tactile and thermal perception in the previously allodynic area was preserved. When the local anesthetic block waned, spontaneous pain, allodynia, and motor symptoms returned. We propose a model of neuropathic pain in which ongoing nociceptive afferent input from a peripheral focus dynamically maintains altered central processing that accounts for allodynia, spontaneous pain, and other sensory and motor abnormalities. Blocking the peripheral input causes the central processing to revert to normal, abolishing the symptoms for the duration of the block. The model accounts for sympathetically maintained (SMP) and sympathetically independent (SIP) pain. The peripheral input can be independent of sympathetic activity or driven completely or in part by activity in sympathetic efferents or by circulating catecholamines. The shared final common pathway may explain the common features of SMP and SIP.

Transdermal clonidine versus placebo in painful diabetic neuropathy.

In a randomized, double-blind, 2-period crossover study, 24 patients with pain due to diabetic polyneuropathy received transdermal clonidine, 0.3 mg/day, and placebo patches, each for 6 weeks. Pain was assessed daily by a 13-word descriptor list. Mean daily pain scores for the 6th week, the primary outcome variable, averaged 13% lower with clonidine than with placebo (95% conf. lim. for clonidine effect: 29% reduction to 3% increase in pain), which was not statistically significant (P = 0.11, 2-tailed paired t test). After this study, however, 9 patients who wished to continue clonidine had single (3 patients) or multiple (6 patients) cycles of clonidine withdrawal and rechallenge. Seven of 9 patients consistently reported return of pain with patch withdrawal followed by relief upon retreatment. One patient had an equivocal response, and the other patient had no relief upon retreatment. The 7 responders appeared similar to the other 17 patients in pain quality and neurological exam. We conclude that there may be a subset of patients with diabetic polyneuropathy who respond to transdermal clonidine. Further research is needed to identify features of neuropathic pain that predict drug response and to develop study designs that are more sensitive to a response in a subset of patients.