Few decades ago pharmaceutical companies were giving incentives to medical professionals to attend conferences on pain management, free travel, five-star hotel stays, gift hampers, toys to bring back to the kids, and much more, all the while introducing opioids and other prescriptive painkillers and encouraging them to prescribe them to pain patients. The whole strategy..
In the wake of heavy losses incurred by both people and government in terms of productivity and finances due to opioid epidemic, there is an urgent need for an efficient therapy to control and curb the crisis. Scientists and medical practitioners recently highlighted the effectiveness of an interdisciplinary model of care for managing opioid use..
As the nation is struggling to come to terms with two most disturbing health issues – opioids and mental health, a new collaborative between 13 largest health systems in Minnesota seems to fight these problems on a different scale. The Minnesota Health Collaborative has been active since January 2017 and is presently focused on identifying..
Undoubtedly, opioids are the most effective compounds to successfully treat moderate to severe pain and their use has substantially increased over the past decades. According to the 2017 Annual Surveillance Report of Drug-Related Risks and Outcomes published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 19.1 people out of every 100 received one..
Opioids, an important tool for physicians and one of the most effective drugs for treating chronic pain and suffering, are widely associated with abuse and addiction. Although not effective for all, opioids can help make life manageable. One of the central issues surrounding opioid prescriptions is the problem of morally prescribing opioids. Oftentimes, physicians face..
The rapidly growing number of people addicted to opioids and heroin is shattering the social fabric of the United States. The epidemic is now being labelled as one of the worst disasters the country has ever faced. Thousands of Americans die every year due to opioid overdose. With hordes of youngsters falling prey to addiction..
Opioids are generally prescribed to treat moderate to severe pain. They include drugs, such as oxycodone (OxyContin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), codeine, morphine and fentanyl, as well as heroin, which is an illegal drug. These medications provide a sense of well-being and pleasure because they stimulate certain regions of the brain that involve the reward system. Since..
“Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself.” Dr. Albert Schweitzer, French physician, 1931 The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), defined pain as an “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage.” Since pain has troubled and perplexed humans for generations, various cures have..
Numerous efforts have been taken by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other government bodies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to control the prevalence of prescription drug misuse across communities. According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the United States housed nearly 3.8 million people..
Abuse of prescription drugs, especially painkillers, has become a major health epidemic in the United States, with millions of overdose deaths occurring every year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that over 183,000 people died due to the overdose of prescription painkillers from 1999 to 2015. In fact, a huge percentage of people in..