Speaking of Pain

Benzodiazepines are overprescribed and abused; are increasingly responsible for emergency room visits; and are contraindicated for patients with chronic pain. Is this a surprise? Read more, here.

Patients often worry that low back pain indicates serious injury or disease that may rapidly progress. However, most acute back pain improves significantly within a month of onset and requires little treatment apart from OTC analgesics and sometimes heat.

Chronic pain management in the elderly is complex. Safe and effective use of analgesic medications in geriatric patients requires risk-benefit analysis.

Medication overuse headache can result from overuse of any drug to abort acute headache. Discontinuation is the only effective treatment and is difficult.

There are some special properties of methadone about which prescribers need to be aware to ensure its efficacy and avoid adverse events.

The FDA recently made decisions on the approval of 2 new formulations of oxycodone that were developed in an attempt to reduce the abuse of this drug. One drug, Oxecta, received approval. Another, Remoxy, did not. Where do things now stand?

After the decision to prescribe an opioid for pain control, how do you choose between a short- or long-acting preparation? The decision isn’t always simple, but there are guidelines to help ensure the appropriate choice for each patient.

Given that pain following surgery is predictable, one might assume we know a lot about optimal analgesia and management. A meta-analysis of Cochrane Reviews, however, reveals that we still have a lot to learn. Read more, here.

There is an old saying in real estate that the 3 most important features about a property for sale are “location, location, and location.” In medicine, an equivalent aphorism for the best way to avoid legal problems is “document, document, and document.”

The case of NHL hockey star Derek Boogaard’s untimely death from an accidental overdose of oxycodone and alcohol provides a sorrowful reminder of the potentially deadly, but underappreciated, effects of “ordinary” acetaminophen.