New Treatments Show Promise for Disease Modification in Painful DPN

It’s an exciting time to work in pain management, according to Shravani Durbhakula, MD, MPH, MBA, one of the speakers at this morning’s breakfast symposium on painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy. With new data coming out regularly and new technologies and treatment modalities growing in use, patients who once were forced to turn to opioids have a wealth of new—and better—options.

Dr. Durbhakula is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University and will be joined by John Steinberg, DPM, APMA’s opening session speaker and a professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine. During the talk, Dr. Durbhakula will revisit some of the pharmacological options she presented about at last year’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Nashville, TN.

She will also share exciting new developments, including two-year data on spinal cord stimulation showing improved neurological outcomes for patients with diabetic neuropathy. “Traditionally, there have not been a lot of disease-modifying treatments for diabetic neuropathy,” Dr. Durbhakula said.

She will also cover peripheral nerve stimulation, a less invasive nerve stimulation modality, which is showing promise for painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Finally, she’ll introduce surgical decompression for painful DPN.

“Neuropathic pain is one of those areas we’re trying as much as possible to treat with non-opioid modalities,” Dr. Durbhakula said. “The most recent guidelines suggest we really should not be using opioids. We have an abundance of new procedures and new modalities, and it’s an exciting space to be in.” In her own practice, she said, she has been able to take patients who were on the equivalent of 400 mg of morphine per day to nothing using other treatments.

She emphasized that many patients and physicians are unaware of the latest data around pain management and the new modalities available. “Not every therapy is right for every patient, but I want physicians to be aware of the options so that patients have the range of options. We are not where we were even five years ago.”