The Holy Grail: long-acting local anaesthetics and liposomes.

The ability to provide an extended duration of analgesia of days following a single injection without the need for catheters, pumps and infusion systems would be a great benefit in acute and chronic pain. Exciting progress is being made in our ability to combine local anaesthetics with liposomes and polymer microspheres. These interesting formulations in animal models have allowed up to 4 days of analgesia. Their use clinically will be a great advance which could possibly occur in the near future.