Archive for January, 2008

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Saturday, January 5th, 2008

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Opioids used for people who are not in pain can induce physical and psychological dependence. This does not happen to patients who receive them for pain relief, for instance after an operation or for severe pain from osteoporotic vertebral collapse. Some governments restrict medical availability on the grounds that if the drugs are available medically this will worsen the street addiction problem. There is no evidence for this. The casualties are patients who are deprived of adequate pain relief.In chronic pain opioids are usually given by mouth. The dose is worked out by titration over a period of days, and then the drug is given regularly, not waiting for the pain to come back. Initial problems with nausea or dizziness commonly settle. If constipation is likely laxatives are given.Patients who cannot swallow can try sublingual, transdermal or suppository dosing. Subcutaneous infusion, usually from a small (external) pump is used for terminal patients who cannot manage these other routes. Rarely the epidural route is used for combination infusion of opioid and local anaesthetic.Antidepressants work on the nervous system to relieve depression. We use them in much lower dosage (about half), and we use them to relieve pain. Classically they were used to relieve pain that was burning rather than shooting in character, and anticonvulsants were used for shooting pains. Now we tend to use antidepressants as first line for both types of pain, because we have greater success and because we believe the antidepressants cause fewer adverse effects.Foremost among these factors is a reappraisal of the pharmacology of chronically administered opioids, and a growing understanding of the significant differences in pharmacology that exist with chronic as opposed to acute administration.Most of the knowledge gleaned about opioid pharmacology, until recently, was derived from single or limited dose studies conducted in the presence of either experimentally induced or acute pain. In a construct that recognizes chronic and acute pain as distinct disorders, there is limited justification for applying knowledge gained from one setting to the other uncritically.

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The inadequate scientific basis for prescribing practices is linked to and compounded by firmly held beliefs regarding the dangers of opioid therapy. Such beliefs are now widely understood to be based more on cultural biased than medical considerations.,, Recognition that the uncritical acceptance of these biases has historically impeded legitimate scientific inquiry and the dissemination and implementation of knowledge already on hand has engendered an almost unparalleled scientific activism to dispel these myths. Guidelines released by the World Health Organization,, American Pain Society, American Society of Clinical Oncology, Oncology Nursing Society the American Society of Anesthesiologists and U.S. government Agency for Health Care Policy Research, stress the importance of opioid therapy and articulate the need to overcome exaggerated concerns about its risks.
The mainstay of treatment for cancer pain of moderate to severe intensity is with potent opioid analgesics, which occupy the highest tier of the three step ladder schema (see Figure 1) recommended by the World Health Organization.9 Patients may access this ladder at any level and may be started on potent opioids initially for severe pain. Also of note is that when patients ascend the ladder serially, less potent analgesics should not be automatically eliminated since the NSAIDs may provide additive analgesia and the mild opioids may be useful for breakthrough or incident pain.The various opioids produce analgesia by similar mechanisms and when administered in comparable doses, the quality of analgesia and spectrum of side effects are similar.? Nevertheless, individuals vary idiosyncratically in their sensitivity to the analgesic effects and toxicity of the various drugs (incomplete cross tolerance), forming the basis for the clinical use of morphine alternatives. Other reasons for selecting alternate opioid preparations and routes include convenience of dosing and patient satisfaction, variable patterns of pain, gastrointestinal dysfunction, the need for concentrated formulations, and prior favorable clinician and patient experience.