The need for pain medication alternatives to opioids
By Dr. Ming Kao
The opioid crisis has reached epic proportions. More Americans die per year from opioid-related deaths than from traffic accidents.
In 2016, the Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy sent a letter to every clinician in the United States. An immediate reaction from many clinicians was to immediately stop prescribing opioids, and to discharge from their practices those patients on high dose chronic opioids.
This is a lose-lose situation, a situation that I doubt is Dr. Murthy’s intent. It is a lose-lose because the clinicians lose the patients they know so well, and because patients’ otherwise stable chronic care is disrupted. Many patients in fact faced the prospect of undergoing opioid withdrawal.
What is the solution?
For years, I have been compiling a structured database of all pain treatments. This includes a comprehensive catalog of all medications used in pain. What I have found is that:
There are 180 non-opioid pain medications
Equipped with these 180 alternatives to opioids, pain physicians can help patients manage their pain without the need for chronic opioids.
For us in the field of Pain Medicine, this is the easy part. The difficulty is the outreach to the greater healthcare community and to patients with chronic pain.
To stem the tide on the opioid crisis, we need opioid alternatives.
Originally published at drmingkao.com.
