| Podcast
New paradigms of patient care postsurgery (such as spinal surgery) utilizing both pre- and postoperative multimodal approaches to analgesia, nonopioid medications specifically, will be discussed. Included in the course will be presurgical and immediate postoperative medications, and both acute and...
| Podcast
Patients with chronic pain are less active than average, exposing them to increasing risks of comorbid conditions, resulting in decreasing functional status for ADLs and low activity ability. This cycle results in low tolerance for physical activities; decreased participation in school, workforce...
| Article
For the last decade or longer, we’ve been talking about the challenges with opioids, and they are a challenging class of drug. On the one hand, they’re great at treating severe levels of pain; they may be the only class of medicine that works for severe pain. But there’s a lot of baggage...
| Article
With respect to treating Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, we have had to deal with almost strict empiricism; people just used what they thought worked and what they were comfortable with. Of course, being a researcher, I was always ‘we need better evidence and more data.’ One of the hurdles against...
| Article
A new retrospective study conducted by researchers from University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City reports that preoperative use of opioids is a significant predictor of continued postoperative opioid use in patients who undergo lumbar spinal fusion surgery. Study author Andrew Pugely, MD...
| Article
Sexual pain affects almost 20% of women across the world and in the United States somewhere between 8% and 20% depending on who you read. It’s been associated with a lot of physical disability, sexual dysfunction, psychiatric disability and excessive healthcare costs. The problem is because it’s...
| Article
I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. In the early 2000s, there was this increase in opioid prescribing and use that has led us to the predicament we’re in now with the opioid abuse and misuse epidemic, as they’re calling it. And now no one wants to prescribe them. For our...
| Article
Urine toxicology is actually a big business in many fields of medicine, not just pain management. A lot of healthcare facilities, critical care units, emergency departments utilize tox screening as well. As of 2015, it was close to a 5 billion dollar business. A lot of new companies are offering...
| Podcast
Overdose--a small word that packs a major punch, and a big reason for many recent legal regulatory changes in controlled substance prescribing and pain management. Too many physicians and allied healthcare practitioners are caught unawares by the legal issues surrounding overdose events, fatal and...
| Article
Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, report that receptors on immune cells may be a more effective therapeutic target than nerve cells for the delivery of analgesia for chronic pain. The discovery arose from an investigation into the mechanism of action of a...