Interventional Spine Research Paper

IAT is reporting they received an adverse verdict in the amount of $2,305,376 on 10/13/16, with likelihood the plaintiff will be awarded additional monetary damages based on jurisdictional laws.

The main issue presented in this article is that current painkillers are highly addictive, and all have extremely risky side effects. This is leading an increasing amount of people each year to form a dependency for these drugs. Ultimately, resulting in more people dying every year from causes that include painkiller addiction also known as opioid addiction.

Opioid abuse, misuse and overdose is a problem in The United States. You can’t turn on the TV or read a newspaper without some mention of the epidemic. This issue has caused the practice of prescribing or taking narcotic pain medication to be looked at under a microscope. Patients are fearful to use some necessary pain medication, because they may become addicted. Other patients who genuinely do have pain and need medication are having a tougher time obtaining the help they need. The problem of abuse and addiction is tough to solve since for some people the medications are the only way they can function and live a semi-normal life. A patient with pain may be hesitant to visit the doctor and

Opioids, otherwise known as prescription pain medication, are used to treat acute and chronic pain. They are the most powerful pain relievers known. When taken as directed they can be safe and effective at managing pain, however, opioids can be highly addictive. Ease of access helps people get pain medications through their physician or by having friends and family get the medication for them. With their ease of access and being highly addictive the use and misuse of opioids have become a growing epidemic. Patients should be well educated on the affects opioid use can have. More importantly instead of the use of opioids, physicians should look into alternative solutions for pain management. While pain medication is helpful with chronic pain, it is also highly addictive, doctors should be more stringent to whom and how often they prescribe pain medication.

Vivek Murthy, a U.S. Surgeon General, said he wanted to change the way Doctors have been taught to handle pain management for the last twenty to thirty years (824). The reason Murthy wants to do this is because while he was reading a training document for nurses and doctors it claimed , "If your patient is concerned that they may develop dependence on opioids, you can safely reassure them that addiction to opioids is very rare in patients who have pain" (823). This document also reassured doctors they could prescribe opioids as a long-term treatment. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention advises doctors that pain-relieving effects may wear off for long-term users(824). This explains how opioids can be used to deal with pain management, but if used as a long-term treatment it can create an

The use of opioid-based prescription medications to treat non-terminal chronic pain can cause side effects from short term use, and is overly common and ineffective. Firstly, opioid usage can induce negative short-term effects. According to William A. Darity, Jr., short-term opioid usage causes negative effects such as “euphoria, drowsiness, and impaired motor and cognitive functioning” (“Drugs”). The short term effects of the opioids may cause the patient to isolate him or herself socially due to being self-conscious about his or her friends and peers seeing the individual in their current condition. Due to his or her fragile emotional state, however, if the patient isolates him or herself during a time in which he or she should have increased

The world of opioids can be divided into two categories: (1) illicit opioids and (2) prescription opioids. Illicit opioids include substances like heroin that people abuse to reach a euphoric and relaxed state. In contrast, prescription opioids are commonly used by doctors in a medical setting to treat pain. Some of these powerful painkillers include codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, and methadone. While these prescription medications provide pain relief for patients who are recovering from surgery or injuries, they also pose serious risks when they are misused. Among these risks are addiction, overdose, and death.

Mandated limits on opioid prescriptions for acute pain offers the promise of advancing the safe use of these medications in two ways. First, it will reduce the exposure of first time users to these addictive substances following episodes of acute pain. For some patients who come to misuse opioids, the euphoria or sedating effects of these medications are initially experienced in the context of routine medical care. There are countless anecdotes of patients who take opioids for a minor orthopedic injury or some other acute pain condition and then go on to use prescription opioids non-medically. A recent population-based study suggested that 6% of incident opioid users progress to long-term use.4 Another study found that patients who received opioids following minor surgery were 44% more likely to become long-term opioid users compared to those who did not.5 Decreasing the initial amount dispensed may potentially lessen the risk that patients develop an affinity for these drugs and transition to chronic use or misuse.

Doctors and other medical professional specialize in providing quality medical care for their patients, are now fighting to control pain without the risk of misuse and abuse of prescribed medications by their patients. One disadvantage of quality care is providing opioid medications to help control extreme pain for some patients. Many patients have become dependent on opioid—highly addicted painkillers such as fentanyl, hydrocodone, morphine, oxycodone, propoxyphene, and methadone. According to 21 Health Organizations and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) cited by ACPM, “effective pain management is an integral and important aspect of quality medical care, and pain should be treated aggressively” (the American College of Preventive Medicine, 2011). Aggressively fighting patients’ pain with opioid medications have led to an increase rate of addictions to the level in which it is known as uncontrollable epidemic in today’s society.

Opioids are powerful analgesics and have been considered as important substances for the severe pain management, especially if the pain is not managed by above non-opioid agents. There are many adverse effects such as constipation, sweating, weight gain, sleep disturbance, memory loss, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, fatigue and opioid

Article 11: Chronic pain is associated with impairment in sleep. The relationship between using prescribed opioids and sleep is unclear. The focus of the study was to examine differences in self-reported sleep quality between groups of patients who were different by chronic pain and prescribed opioid status. The use of opioids with chronic non-cancer pain continues to increase. Common adverse effects associated with the initiation of opioids including constipation, nausea, somnolence, and vomiting. Up to 50% of patients stop taking opioid therapy because of intolerance or insufficient pain relief. Research shows that pain often results in disruptions to sleep and impaired sleep itself a risk factor for pain. In a comprehensive review

There are many various kinds of prescription of pain relievers, which include: opioids, corticosteroids, antidepressants and anticonvulsants (anti-seizure medications). Among them I would like to focus on opioid medications and its side effects. Opioid medications are narcotic pain medications that contain natural poppy plant, synthetic opiates such as; methadone, fentanyl, tapentadol and tramadol, as well as the semi- synthetic opioids such as; oxycodone, hydrocodone, oxymorphone, hydromorphone and heroin. Opioid prescriptions are morphine (C17H19NO3), heroin (C21H23NO5), codeine (C18H21NO3) and thebaine (C19H21NO3). They are highly addictive substances are called opiates. Opioid medications have been used for hundreds and thousands of years to treat both pain and mental health problems. It is also use in a short-term pain after surgery. According to the survey in the past two decades, the prescription of opioid in the United States has been increased to the higher levels that is more than 600% (Paulozzi & Baldwin, 2012). However, that opioid medications are very dangerous to the patients’ respiratory system, other parts of the internal body and even can cause death. It should be only being use after wise discernment and with a great care.

Opioid medications are frequently prescribed for severe pain. Opioids includes the pain medications like oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, and fentanyl as well as the illegal drug heroin (American Society of Addiction Medication, 2016). Many people rely on these drugs to relieve their pain from surgery, active cancer, chronic pain and end of life care (WebMD, 2017). Studies from the 2012 National Health Interview show that over 11% of adults report having chronic pain (Dowell, Haegerich & Chou, 2016). The opioid epidemic is a significant issue for nursing on the main respect that there is currently a problem with over- prescribing of narcotics and the millions of people addicted to opioid medications

According Vase et al. (2015), in a vast amount of clinical drug trials involving pain, administration of narcotic painkillers showed no statistically significant increase in effectiveness over a placebo. Pain is a subjective feeling one has that accompanies a physical sensation. For this reason pain

There are four classes of medications used to relieve back pain. First class are analgesics, analgesics only used to ease the pain, stiffness, and swelling. These medications are, Ibuprofen, Ketoprofen, and Naproxen (Bodger 127). Second, muscle relaxants “to reduce the pain from muscle spasm or tightness”. Methocarbamol, cyclobenzaprine, orphenadrine citrate, and carisoprodol are prescribed medications that do not work only on the affected area, but on all muscles (Bodger 129). Third, tranquilizers “anxiety prescriptions can achieve the same effect as muscle relaxants at the same time as they relieve anxiety, which can be the exacerbator—if not the sole cause—of muscle tension”, include alprazolam, Librium, and diazepam (Bodger 129). Fourth, Anti-depressants “very low doses of antidepressant medications—lower than would have an effect on psychological disorders—are sometimes prescribed to relax muscle, reduce pain, and aid the sleep of those with chronic backache”. Those drugs are clomipramine, imipramine, and amitriptyline hydrochloride (Bodger 129). “Oral administration of steroid medication may provide similar anti-inflammatory activity, it does not require an MRI or radiation exposure, can be delivered quickly by primary care physicians, carries less risk, and would be much less expensive than an [epidural steroid injection]”