Reactions to "Doctors Warned About Common Drugs For Pain"

From Doctor Anonymous blog:

The Washington Post came out with an article on Tuesday with the attention grabbing headline, "Doctors Warned About Common Drugs For Pain: NSAIDS Tied To Risk Of Heart Attack And Stroke." The American Heart Association came out with a statement discouraging use of Cox-2 inhibitors because of it's association with heart attacks and stroke.

"In the past, many physicians would prescribe the Cox-2 drugs first," said Elliott Antman, a professor at Harvard Medical School who led a group of experts assembled by the heart association to study the issue. "We are specifically recommending that they should be used as a last resort."

"This is a very firm statement we are making," he added. "It is our belief, hope and desire that physicians will take our advice, and by doing so it is our belief and hope that we will reduce the number of patients who suffer heart attacks and strokes."

Now, I have no problem with this. My patients have been scared off from these drugs with all the press coverage that has been surrounding these drugs, that the mere mention of these drugs during an office appointment sends the patient running away.

Here's where I start to have a problem with the AHA statement....

http://doctoranonymous.blogspot.com/2007/02/pain-management-dilemma.html

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From Academia as an Extreme Sport blog:

To be honest, this has me sort of speechless. I will be the first to admit that I can be a bit irrationally biased when it comes to the topic of pain management, but that's in large part because nights like tonight, while not common, are also not very rare: I'm laying on a heating pad, have targeted heat strips on several key pain sites, and am both counting down when I can take my next short acting pain control medication, and contemplating doubling the dose of my longer acting pain medicine.

In short, I'm hurting. And I get very cranky when I see people making recommendations that, were they followed when I was first diagnosed with a chronic pain issue, would have kept me in pain for months while we ran through all of the American Heart Association guidelines.

http://www.kellyhills.com/blog/?p=689