“The over-prescription of painkillers ferociously feeds the rampant opioid epidemic now sweeping our country like a hurricane, and these common-sense guidelines will usher in changes that will help calm this deadly storm”, Blumenthal added. Among the recommendations: to use urine drug testing before prescribing highly addictive painkillers like oxycontin, codeine and morphine.
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“The science of opioids for chronic pain is clear”, Tom Frieden, the director of the CDC, said in a teleconference yesterday. They hope is that doctors will reserve powerful painkillers for things like end of life treatment and cancer patients. The guideline recommends that PCPs try to use alternative options for pain management that do not involve opioids, such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen, before prescribing opioids. This new guideline is for primary care providers-who account for prescribing almost half of all opioid prescriptions-treating adult patients for chronic pain in outpatient settings. Physicians should consider prescribing non-opioid therapy for chronic pain not related to cancer, end-of-life care and palliative care. Currently, medics prescribe the said painkillers to patients in a two or four-week period. Doctors should only prescribe the drugs if patient has been showing improvement. Plus the doctor says opioids aren’t even an effective treatment for chronic pain.
The CDC defines chronic pain as pain that lasts longer than three months or past the time of normal tissue healing. The CDC guidelines note that the deaths have paralleled an enormous increase in the sales of these drugs. When they’re taken in doses at too high levels, they slow down or stop our breathing; between 1999 and 2014 opioid drugs killed 165,000. That means I can explain to patients why I really cannot write more than a few days of heavy duty pain meds, and that if they feel that’s what they need they must see a pain specialist.
“The best way to combat the opioid epidemic is to prevent people from becoming addicted to opioids in the first place”, she said in a statement. He laid out an 8-point plan that he said would “focus on policies aimed at reversing the epidemic, while still providing patients in pain access to effective relief”.
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Doctors began generously prescribing opiate painkillers in the 1990s after pharmaceutical companies and medical experts deemed they could be used for back pain, arthritis and other conditions without fear of creating addictions.
