"Using local anesthetics to temporarily block nerve signals from the heart is a safe and effective treatment for chronic refractory angina, a painful condition resulting from inadequate blood flow to the heart, new research suggests. One injection provides about 3 weeks of relief.

Angina is a common heart problem that can usually be remedied with drug therapy, angioplasty, or surgery. However, for patients with chronic refractory angina, the drugs do not work and due to the presence of other illnesses, they are not candidates for angioplasty or surgery. Thus, these patients are often left with severe, debilitating chest pain.

There are a growing number of patients with angina who, for whatever reason, are not candidates for angioplasty or surgery, lead author Dr. Roger Moore, from The Cardiothoracic Center in Liverpool, UK, and colleagues note. Temporary nerve block or "sympathectomy" has been endorsed as treatment for such patients who have not respond to other measures.

To better understand the risks and benefits of temporary sympathectomy as a treatment for chronic refractory angina, the researchers assessed the outcomes of 59 patients who underwent a total of 327 nerve blockades over a 2-year period. Although the blockades work to control heart pain, the injections themselves are not in the heart, but rather at sites where the nerves travel.

The researchers' findings appear in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

Depending on where the local anesthetic was injected, nerve blockade provided pain relief for 2.8 to 3.5 weeks, on average. About 3 percent of patients experienced complications from the blockade, but all were mild, fully reversible, and just one patient required overnight hospitalization." National Library of Medicine {CLICK FOR MORE}