Intermittent bowel obstruction during end of life is terrible with pain and vomiting. Regular self administered Octreotide injections given at first hint of trouble, controlled this problem.
Management of Treatment-Related Intermittent Partial Small Bowel Obstruction: The Use of Octreotide
Pain and Symptom Management In Press online 11 February 2010
Jeff Myers, Anoo Tamber, Macey Farhadian no abstract
- Ca vagina with bowel spread
- Would follow a pattern of diarrhea, then abdominal pain and distention, and finally vomiting over a four day period
- Diagnosed with Malignant Bowel Obstruction
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Octreotide is a bowel hormone – reduces bowel secretions, bowel mobility, and bowel blood flow.
- “She was instructed and taught to subcutaneously administer 300 mg of octreotide three times daily at the first sign of symptoms” – to be taken for 5 day course
- dramatic improvement.
Addendum – also helped a case of obstruction in connective tissue disease:
OCTREOTIDE TREATMENT OF CHRONIC INTESTINAL PSEUDOOBSTRUCTION SECONDARY TO CONNECTIVE TISSUE DISEASES
GABRIEL PERLEMUTER, PATRICE CACOUB, STANISLAS CHAUSSADE, BERTRAND WECHSLER,
DANIEL COUTURIER, and JEAN-CHARLES PIETTE
ARTHRITIS & RHEUMATISM Vol. 42, No. 7, July 1999, pp 1545–1549
Comment – wonderful but not cheap; would need palliative care coverage to afford