Post Vasectomy Pain: Opioids vs OTC

Newswise – Routine use of opioids after vasectomy doesn't improve pain control, but is associated with a substantial rate of persistent opioid use in the months after the procedure, reports a study in the October issue of The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological...

Opioid Use Disorder Undertreated with FDA Approved Medications

Newswise — Though research shows that medication-assisted treatment can help people who are addicted to opioids, the three drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are underused, according to a review of current medical data on opioid addiction in the U.S. This review appears in the...

Aberrant Drug Behaviors and Responsibilities of Primary Care

Primary care has a great opportunity to assess patients’ drug taking behaviors when they enter the healthcare system. It’s very rare that a patient would start their care with a specialist, and primary care is where most people would go outside of some sort of acute care setting. So, their ability...

Pain, Drugs, and Ethics

Pain remains one of the most common reasons that people seek medical attention in the United States. When pain was designated as the fifth vital sign, people were given the right to have their pain assessed and effectively treated by their healthcare professionals. A number of ethical dilemmas have...

Acute Pain Management for Patients on Buprenorphine

With our current climate of opioid overuse and increasing opioid related deaths, alternatives to pure mu opioids are necessary. Buprenorphine, an important weapon in the arsenal for management of substance use disorder, is now rising in popularity as an opioid option for chronic pain. Evidence has...

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Worse With Benzodiazepine Exposure

Newswise — Babies born after being exposed to both opioids and benzodiazepines before birth are more likely to have severe drug withdrawal, requiring medications like morphine for treatment, compared to infants exposed to opioids alone, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study...

Treating Pain and Reducing Overprescribing Through Education

Newswise — Orthopaedic surgeons are the third-highest physician prescribers of opioids, writing more than 6 million prescriptions a year. Because over-dispensing of opioids is a factor contributing to the ongoing opioid epidemic, researchers at Johns Hopkins surveyed orthopaedic providers to better...

Nonmedical Opioid Use Initiation Investigation

Newswise — In a common narrative of the path to opioid misuse, people become addicted to painkillers after a doctor prescribed them pills to treat an injury and then, later, switch to harder drugs, such as heroin. However, nonmedical opioid users were more likely to say they began abusing opioids...

Very Early Withdrawal Pain in Newborns Exposed to Opioids

Newswise — Babies exposed to opioids while their mothers were pregnant with them may need special care even before they start to experience withdrawal symptoms, according to Penn State research.

Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine found that as soon as 24 and 48 hours after birth...

Vaccinating Against Opioid Use Disorder and Abuse?

With funding provided by a grant from the National Institutes for Health, a research team at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center is seeking to develop a vaccine that would stimulate the patient’s immune system to produce antibodies that would attack an ingested opioid. If successful...