Prescription et gestions des PCA de stupéfiants : un outil pour ne plus se tromper et gagner du temps

Hospitals caring for cancer patients are all confronted at some time with the prescription and management of patient-controlled analgesia (PCA). These techniques enable very precise and gradual titrations for pain relief and to offer very rapid relief in emergency, instability or intolerance situations. The prescription of PCA requires particular attention from the prescribing practitioners to avoid errors of equivalence, dosage, rate or concentration. The tool presented here results from the focussed efforts of the Medical Oncology service at institut Bergonié, Comprehensive Cancer Centre of South-West France, who has established a very simple system to calculate all the parameters of the prescriptions. This technique applies to morphine and oxycodone electric syringes, morphine and oxycodone PCA, and ketamine electric syringes. Over a few months, these tools enabled the generalisation of prescriptions of PCA drugs, as such entering into routine practice.