Occurrence of Adverse Events in Long-Term Intrathecal Baclofen Infusion: A 1-Year Follow-Up Study of 158 Adults

Eleven years’ experience with Intrathecal Baclofen – Complications, risk factors

“…In our cohort, no significant association was found between occurrence of an adverse event and gender, which is in line with a previous report (Borrini et al., ). Also age was no risk factor for a complication in our study which is in contrast with a previously published paper (Motta et al., ): in the study of Motta and coworkers, complications were statistically more likely in patients with an age of 10 years and younger.…”

“…In a prospective, observational cohort study in 158 adults treated with ITB therapy and followed up for 1 year, 18% experienced 38 adverse events (Borrini et al, 2014). Motta and coworkers analyzed complications and risk factors in 200 consecutive children and adolescents after intrathecal baclofen pump implantation (Motta, Buonaguro, & Stignani, 2007).…”

Cost-effectiveness of Intrathecal Baclofen Therapy in severe refractory non-focal disabling spasticity: a Spanish hospital perspective

“…In the state of basically correct functioning ITB, patients normally only make medical visits for follow-up and pump refills. Nevertheless, sometimes they might experience (typically catheter-related) adverse events implying additional health-care resource usage [19][20][21][22] and in any case periodically need a pump replacement due to the device's battery depletion. On occasion, the reimplant surgery is used to replace the catheter as well.…”

“…Nevertheless, for the base-case analysis, it was conservatively assumed that reimplants would occur every 6 years. An explantation occurred once in the EPICE data set; considering the rates reported in the literature [18,20,22,27], the corresponding probability was accepted as a conservative estimate for the present cost-effectiveness analysis. Other adverse events implying health-care resource use occurred in the EPICE study on average 0.014 times per month, which is consistent with recent data reported in the literature [20,22,29].…”

Troubleshooting Complications of Intrathecal Baclofen Therapy

“…Complications can be considered as mechanical (ie a hardware issue with the pump or catheter), infection related, drug or procedure related (for example baclofen overdose or deep vein thrombosis). Mechanical complications are the most frequently observed; these usually involve catheter malfunction (disconnection, kinks, breaks or displacement) [13][14][15]. Pump dysfunction is rare with the use of baclofen but corrosion of the internal tubing causing a motor stall can occur particularly if pumps are used off label with drug mixtures [16].…”