Hi,

Thanks for sharing your health concerns.

As you know, the chest wall has several nerve endings, that might be transected and damaged during sternotomy; some patients develop pain as many of these nerve endings try to heal but could not in an ideal fashion; thus a major component of the pain might be neuropathic (origin in sensory nerves).

There are many medications that do not interfere with your anticoagulants or antiplatelets and can be used for treatment of chronic neuropathic pain, such as amitryptiline, imipramine, gabapentin and pregabalin; also some patients find benefit in accupuncture techniques and local steroid therapy has been used with some success.

I encourage you to talk to your doctors about these options.

Hope this is useful, wish you the best health,

Dr Brenes-Salazar
Cardiology
Mayo Clinic Rochester MN

---