Breakthrough or Rescue Doses of Morphine
- A breakthrough or rescue dose (used interchangeably in the literature) of morphine is one that is given when the patient requires morphine for symptoms in addition to the regularly prescribed dose
- It is used to treat episodic or breakthrough pain which has several types:
- Spontaneous pain (unrelated to movement or other incident)
- Incident pain (related to an activity, action or event)
- End-of-dose pain (occurring just prior to the next scheduled dose)
- It is made available on a prn basis in addition to their regular dose
- Providing a breakthrough or rescue dose of morphine is an important part of managing pain, dyspnea and cough
- Breakthrough or rescuedoses are generally approximately 10% of the total 24 hour dose and should be ordered q1h prn (on an as needed basis)
Example 1: A patient receives 10 mg q4h SC of morphine = 60 mg in 24h SC. Therefore, appropriate breakthrough or rescue dose is 5 mg q1h prn SC
Example 2: A patient receives 5 mg q4h PO of morphine = 30 mg in 24h PO. Therefore, appropriate breakthrough or rescue dose is 2.5 mg q1h prn PO
page revision: 3, last edited: 10 Jun 2009 09:45