| Article
Taking advantage of a $500 million congressional addition to its base appropriation for FY2018, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced a new research initiative that it describes as “…a bold new trans-NIH initiative called Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL). The HEAL initiative...
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The Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania is currently working on a variety of fronts to address the issue of opioid overdose risk. CHIBE seeks to combine psychology and economics with clinical expertise to...
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Findings from a recent study conducted at Kaiser Permanente Department of Research and Evaluation conclude that when physicians reduce opioid dosage levels for their patients who are on high-dose opioid therapy for chronic pain, levels of patient satisfaction with care do not suffer. Lead author...
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A cross-sectional study published in the July edition of Drug and Alcohol Dependence concludes that the application of dispositional mindfulness may mediate the risk for opioid misuse in patients with chronic pain who are on long-term opioid therapy. The practice can attenuate opioid craving and...
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If I ask patients how satisfied they are with their pain treatment, I think there’s an inverse correlation with whether they’re on opioids or not; and the higher the dose of opioids, the less satisfied they are. In general, I don’t think that they’re a great treatment. I think they’re reserved for a...
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Conclusions from new research conducted by a team from University of West Virginia School of Pharmacy and colleagues may help to inform prescribers’ decision making about the engagement of opioid therapy for noncancer pain. In seeking to better understand the risk factors for transitioning to long...
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Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine and colleagues write that prescription cough and cold medications that contain hydrocodone carry greater risk for adverse effects in children than do those that contain codeine. Additionally, they suggest that the use of any opioid-containing...
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Is naloxone the silver bullet? Well maybe the silver bullet du jour. I think the biggest challenges with respect to naloxone are the educational hurdles because unlike the EpiPen, naloxone is intended to be administered by someone else not the patient. So that means that the burden of determining an...
| Podcast
Many patients receiving opioids will need to be switched from one to another during therapy or at least from one dosage formulation or route of administration to another. During this session, practitioners learn to recognize clinical situations in which opioid switching would be appropriate...
| Podcast
This session will explore some of the challenges resulting from the recent “Decade of Pain.” Clearly, the overuse of opioids and, to some extent, the solutions proposed to curtail the misuse of prescription drugs has led to a shift in how we diagnose and how we treat substance use disorders in this...