Pain Management for Soft Tissue Injuries

  A soft tissue injury can result from so many different situations that it is difficult to describe just one. Incidents leading to the injury can include car  accidents, on-the-job injuries, and sports injuries, just to name a few.  At best, they can leave a person sore for days; in the worst cases, they can leave someone with severe, chronic pain that requires extensive physical therapy and or medical care.  One the many things Pharmacy Innovations can do for your patient with soft tissue injury is work with you to custom compound a topical pain medication.

There are many benefits to prescribing a topical pain medication. Most importantly, topicals allow for the medication to treat the direct source of the pain, and avoid the gastrointestinal tract. In addition to more immediate relief, most patients also suffer far less GI issues from topical pain medications.  Compounded topical pain medications also allow you to customize the medication for each injury, and can accommodate a combination of medications in the same topical, if you desire.  The staff at Pharmacy Innovations is specially trained and able to work with you to determine the best course of therapy for your patient.  Please This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it for more information on treating soft tissue injuries.

Comparison of ketoprofen, piroxicam, and diclofenac gels in the treatment of acute soft-tissue injury in general practice.
General Practice Study Group.Patel RK, Leswell PF. Garrison Medical Centre, Woolwich, London, United Kingdom.

The efficacy, tolerability, and acceptability of topical applications of ketoprofen gel (2.5% w/w), piroxicam gel (0.5% w/w), and diclofenac gel (1% w/w), when administered three times daily for 5 days, in the treatment of acute (within 48 hours) soft-tissue injury, were compared in an open-label, randomized, multicenter, general practice study. Of 1575 patients recruited, 1048 received ketoprofen gel (525 used the gel with a dose-measuring device), 263 received piroxicam gel, and 264 received diclofenac gel. Ketoprofen gel was significantly superior to piroxicam gel in terms of global assessment of treatment response (improvement in 74% vs 65% of patients) and the severity of the injury (38% vs 26% "greatly improved") and in improvements in stiffness (71% vs 64%), restriction of mobility (34% vs 22%), and pain on pressure (81% vs 78%) and movement (83% vs 77%). Ketoprofen gel also compared favorably with diclofenac gel, with a larger proportion of patients assessing a great improvement in the injury (38% vs 30%). Patient acceptability of ketoprofen gel was significantly better than piroxicam gel. More patients noted a significant cooling effect with ketoprofen gel (71%) than with either piroxicam gel (49%) or diclofenac gel (60%). Ketoprofen gel also showed excellent tolerability. In conclusion, ketoprofen gel may offer benefits over established therapies for the treatment of acute soft-tissue injury.

Sources: PMID: 8829026 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]; Clin Ther. 1996 May-Jun;18(3):497-507