DermHelpCentral

What we lose when we undertreat pain

Kate Nicholson is writing a memoir and speaking about her twenty-year journey to healing after a surgery left her in severe pain, unable to sit, limited in standing and walking, and for many years, bedridden.  This TedX talk is necessary viewing for patients and their physicians.

Tapering Opioid Analgesice

Safely discontinuing, or tapering, opioid analgesics is an issue that pain services and primary care providers regularly confront.

This is a good guide to Tapering Opioid Analgesics Download Safely_Tapering_Opioids

Patients in Pain, and a Doctor Who Must Limit Drugs

This is a fine article about the frontline of opioid prescribing: the physician’s office. “The management of chronic pain has had a long, fractious history in the United States. In the 1990s, doctors were admonished for undertreating pain. Opioids, they were told could be safely prescribed and bring life-changing relief. Now the pendulum has swung sharply back and doctors have been scrambling for alternatives.”

Full article.  The May 16, 2016 NY Times article features a family physician from a small town in Nebraska.  It is true to life and worth reading.

FDA Looks at Opioid Prescribing

This is an interesting and useful article in the May 3, 2016, NY Times Journal of Medicine.

 

Opioid Prescribing Gets Another Look
as F.D.A. Revisits Mandatory Doctor Training

Dr. Patrice A. Harris, who is the chairwoman of the A.M.A.’s Task Force to Reduce Opioid Abuse, said the organization was committed to helping doctors better use opioids. But Dr. Harris added that the A.M.A. continued to oppose mandatory opioid training for doctors because many physicians do not prescribe the drugs.

She added that the group also opposed laws that require doctors to check databases before issuing a prescription for a narcotic painkiller. Such laws, which a growing number of states have adopted, are intended to help doctors identify patients who seek prescriptions from multiple physicians and to help doctors avoid prescribing dangerous combinations of drugs. Data shows that when such programs are voluntary, many doctors do not use them.

In spite of what we read, there is still controversy about physician training.

Opioids: By the numbers, a deadly epidemic

By Bob Dunn (The Berkshire Eagle, November 21, 2015)

Fatal opioid-related overdoses in Massachusetts have increased more than 300 percent since the beginning of the century, according to new figures from the Department of Public Health.
According to reports released last month, there were 338 confirmed unintentional opiate fatalities statewide in 2000. In 2014, that number jumped to at least 1,089, according to DPH. 

Full article: Download Opioid Deaths in Massachusetts