Intrathecal therapy for chronic pain.

With the improved utilisation and widespread availability of opiates, the oral treatment of pain due to malignancy has changed radically, so that the expected need for intrathecal (IT) delivery systems for this pain has largely failed to materialise. Instead, the lack of equal progress in the design and production of non-opiates for treating non-malignant pain, in the long term, has resulted in a greater interest in the development of these IT systems in this non-malignant area.