2008 European Pain Management Award

Winner 2008 of the Merial European Pain Management Award

And for 2008, the winner is…

Treatment of neuropathic pain in two cats using amitriptyline by Stephan Mahler & Karine Mérnier (France).

The selected case deserves the award for several reasons. It is original ,and well constructed: introduction, precise cas descritpion, discussion reflecting a good literature review, 21 references. It describes neuropathic pain in cats, a not very well described problem in the domestic species. Doing so, it helps to raise further awareness regarding categories of pain and how different pain management strategies may be required to tackle this problem in a satisfactory manner.

Amitriptyline is well known for the treatement of neuropathic pain in human medicine but only a few case reports are available in the veterinay medicine literature. The authors report about two cases of neuropathic pain in cats which they treated with amitriptyline. They started first with a more traditional pain therapy using the NSAID Meloxicam. This therapy was not successful and morphine was leading to adverse reactions. This is not unusual in cats but when this happens, the therap has to be changed.
In both cases they decided to use amitriptyline because they expected that pain was neuropathic. In human medicine amitriptyline is an option in human medicine. In both cases they could not prove the neuropathic pain certainly, but the clinical signs look like neuropathic pain and therefore they used amitriptyline over a period of 2 to 3 month. Both case reports are a good starting point for a research project with more objective parameters like degree of pain, behabiour of the patient before, during, and after treatment, and the exact diagnose of neuropathic pain.
This application is a proof that valuable publishing papers can be proposed by practitioners, should they save some time to write them. The Merial European Pain Management Award may be a good incentive to begin with!

—The Jury

Download the winning presentation: [Powerpoint] Symposium presentation | [PDF] Scientific poster

About the Award

2008 Speakers

In order to promote research into pain management, our company furthermore instituted the first Merial European Pain Management Award. The Award aims to reward innovative and outstanding work by a veterinarian, in the field of pain management in companion animals or horses. The cases described may exhibit pain of any aetiology, including osteoarthritis, surgery and cancer. The objective is to share knowledge, for a better understanding, recognition, scoring and control of pain in companion animals.
The 2008 award, worth 3000 €, was presented at the 2009 Merial Pain Management Symposium.