Pacira Pharmaceuticals presented data demonstrating the benefits associated with the use of EXPAREL at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, March 24 to March 28 in Las Vegas.
The study evaluated 2,248 patients who underwent hip or knee arthroplasty and received a standard multimodal regimen including periarticular injections. Half of the patients received PAI with bupivacaine HCl with or without ketorolac and morphine, while the other half received PAI with EXPAREL.
The study found that EXPAREL patients had pain scores of 1.98 whereas patients in the other group had scores of 2.43. Around 57 percent of EXPAREL patients reported no pain for the hip procedure as compared to 43.4 percent of patients in the standard group. There was a similar difference among knee procedure patients. Additionally, the study found that use of EXPAREL resulted in cost savings of $1,246 per patient.
EXPAREL is currently indicated for single-dose infiltration into the surgical site to produce postsurgical analgesia.