39] Implantable infusion pumps: Clinical applications

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the clinical applications of the implantable infusion pumps. The use of implantable infusion pumps for the long-term delivery of drugs in human patients has several potential advantages over conventional methods of drug administration. For example, total implantation of the device is largely successful in preventing the entrance of bacteria leading to common complications of external infusion systems, local infection, and even systemic septicemia. An implantable infusion device can provide access for drug delivery to a wide variety and type of specific body sites. Examples of sites in which drugs have been delivered directly using such devices are the intrathecal or subdural spinal spaces, the cerebral ventricles, numerous arteries leading directly to organs at which the drug was directed, the intraperitoneal space, and the intravenous and subcutaneous systems. Such implantable infusion devices also have certain advantages over the other types of polymeric or liposomal drug delivery systems. The most common use of the Infusaid implantable infusion pump is as a means of infusing cancer chemotherapeutic agents into one or more vascular or other body locations. The widest application has been for the treatment of both primary and metastatic cancer of the liver by means of intraarterial infusions of 5-fluorodeoxyuridine (FUdR).