CHLORPROMAZINE AND NARCOTICS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PAIN OF MALIGNANT LESIONS

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Experimental work by Courvoisier and Fournel1 has shown that a new phenothiazine compound chlorpromazine (a French generic name for 10-[γ-dimethylaminopropyl]-2-chlorophenothiazine hydrochloride) intensifies and prolongs the action of various drugs, notably narcotics, hypnotics, anesthetics, and muscle relaxants. Clinically, their results have been confirmed by Laborit2 and by Forster and associates.3 These investigators have used chlorpromazine preoperatively, during the course of an operation, and also postoperatively as a means of reducing the amount of narcotics, hypnotics, and anesthetics normally required. From the findings of these French investigators, one could expect that chlorpromazine, by augmenting the action of narcotics, might be useful for relieving pain in patients who no longer obtain adequate analgesia from large doses of narcotics; for instance, in those patients with advanced malignant lesions, such a drug would be extremely welcome. This report relates experience with what promises to be such a drug. Chemically, chlorpromazine is 10-(γ-dimethylaminopropyl)-2-chlorophenothiazine