"The nation's top federal health agency urged doctors to avoid prescribing powerful opiate painkillers for patients with chronic pain, saying the risks from such drugs far outweigh the benefits for most people."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"Many prescription opiates on the market are as addictive as heroin, and poorly control chronic pain, Frieden said. Doctors should use therapies other than opiates first, including exercise or non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, such as aspirin or ibuprofen, he said."
Anyone who has had severe pain knows how asinine this statement is.
I have arthritis in one knee which was easily treated with a special lubrication injection. But when I developed severe arthritic inflammation in the lower spine there was no anti-inflammatories that I could take due to kidney problems. Not even aspirin or ibuprofen.
The pain was so bad that I couldn't stand up without support.
"Patients with acute pain, such as that caused by an injury, usually need prescription opiates for only three days. Prescribing the drugs for more than seven days is rarely necessary, he said."
Really?
With the help of Vicodin I was able to get through two months of therapy and the inflammation receded to a constant painful condition that I can live with.
"Telling patients and doctors that opiates are rarely needed for more than a few days "will help prevent patients from getting addicted and help keep highly addictive drugs from accumulating in medicine chests," Kolodny said."
Let the doctor treating the individual patient decide what's needed.
The article points out that a number of people OD on such drugs. My question is how many will kill themselves out of despair because they were told to take a couple of aspirin?
The people at the CDC and elsewhere will never know. They'll be to busy calling for the ban of all guns due to the high incident of suicide by handgun (hanging is more common in Europe - a very nasty way to go).
