Irene Tracey, University of Oxford, UK, summarized the contributions of neuroimaging to pain research, and directions for future investigations, during "Translating Neuroimaging Discovery Science for Patient Benefit," a plenary lecture held at the IASP 16th World Congress on Pain, which took place September 26-30, 2016, in Yokohama, Japan. Her take-home message was that findings from neuroimaging will lead to a brighter outlook for patients suffering from chronic pain. "The aim, ultimately, is to use metrics [discovered by imaging studies] to guide diagnosis and therapies," she said. Tracey called for neuroimaging work to help bridge scientific knowledge from cells to systems and across species in order to meet the unmet clinical need for new pain treatments.
More...
http://painresearchforum.org/news/76295-bright-future-brain-imaging-pain
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
I’ve seen the opioid epidemic as a cop. Living it as a patient has been even worse. - The Washington Post
A year ago, I woke in the night with pain so severe I was crying before I was fully aware what was going on. A 50-year-old cop sobbed like a child in the dark.
It was a ruptured disc and related nerve damage. Within a couple of months, it became so severe that I could no longer walk or stand. An MRI later, my surgeon soothingly told me it would all be okay. He would take care of me; the pain would end.
After surgery, I never saw that surgeon again. A nurse practitioner handed me a prescription for painkillers — 180 tablets, 90 each of oxycodone and hydrocodone.
I was lucky: I already knew how easily opioid addiction could destroy a life. I'd arrested addicts and helped people suffering from substance abuse. So as soon as I could, I weaned myself off the medication. Still, I fell into the trap when my pain returned months later, and I started taking the pills again.
Since then, I've been stuck like a growing number of people in a system that leaves patients beholden to terrible health policy, the horrific consequences of federal drug policy, uninformed media hysteria about an opioid epidemic and an army of uncoordinated medical professionals bearing — then seizing — bottles of pills.
I asked repeatedly for alternatives, but I was told none were available. I started physical therapy and sought treatment at an authorized pain management clinic. My first pain management doctor was terse as she prescribed more hydrocodone for daytime and oxycodone for the night, when my pain was worse. To her, I was just another person in a day of people receiving identical treatment. Later she'd say she had little choice: Insurance companies routinely deny even slightly adventurous prescriptions.
A nearby chain pharmacy refused to fill it, saying, "You can't mix hydrocodone and oxycodone." As my prescription testified, I was receiving the required "close monitoring" by a doctor when taking that particular combination. When I called the pain clinic for help, the staff berated me for bothering them. They asked whether I was seeking drugs. I was — the ones they had prescribed.
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/11/ive-seen-the-opioid-epidemic-as-a-cop-living-it-as-a-patient-has-been-even-worse/?
It was a ruptured disc and related nerve damage. Within a couple of months, it became so severe that I could no longer walk or stand. An MRI later, my surgeon soothingly told me it would all be okay. He would take care of me; the pain would end.
After surgery, I never saw that surgeon again. A nurse practitioner handed me a prescription for painkillers — 180 tablets, 90 each of oxycodone and hydrocodone.
I was lucky: I already knew how easily opioid addiction could destroy a life. I'd arrested addicts and helped people suffering from substance abuse. So as soon as I could, I weaned myself off the medication. Still, I fell into the trap when my pain returned months later, and I started taking the pills again.
Since then, I've been stuck like a growing number of people in a system that leaves patients beholden to terrible health policy, the horrific consequences of federal drug policy, uninformed media hysteria about an opioid epidemic and an army of uncoordinated medical professionals bearing — then seizing — bottles of pills.
I asked repeatedly for alternatives, but I was told none were available. I started physical therapy and sought treatment at an authorized pain management clinic. My first pain management doctor was terse as she prescribed more hydrocodone for daytime and oxycodone for the night, when my pain was worse. To her, I was just another person in a day of people receiving identical treatment. Later she'd say she had little choice: Insurance companies routinely deny even slightly adventurous prescriptions.
A nearby chain pharmacy refused to fill it, saying, "You can't mix hydrocodone and oxycodone." As my prescription testified, I was receiving the required "close monitoring" by a doctor when taking that particular combination. When I called the pain clinic for help, the staff berated me for bothering them. They asked whether I was seeking drugs. I was — the ones they had prescribed.
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/11/ive-seen-the-opioid-epidemic-as-a-cop-living-it-as-a-patient-has-been-even-worse/?
How much does it hurt? | Mosaic
One night in May, my wife sat up in bed and said, "I've got this awful pain just here." She prodded her abdomen and made a face. "It feels like something's really wrong." Woozily noting that it was 2am, I asked what kind of pain it was. "Like something's biting into me and won't stop," she said.
"Hold on," I said blearily, "help is at hand." I brought her a couple of ibuprofen with some water, which she downed, clutching my hand and waiting for the ache to subside.
An hour later, she was sitting up in bed again, in real distress. "It's worse now," she said, "really nasty. Can you phone the doctor?" Miraculously, the family doctor answered the phone at 3am, listened to her recital of symptoms and concluded, "It might be your appendix. Have you had yours taken out?" No, she hadn't. "It could be appendicitis," he surmised, "but if it was dangerous you'd be in much worse pain than you're in. Go to the hospital in the morning, but for now, take some paracetamol and try to sleep."
Barely half an hour later, the balloon went up. She was awakened for the third time, but now with a pain so savage and uncontainable it made her howl like a tortured witch face down on a bonfire. The time for murmured assurances and spousal procrastination was over. I rang a local minicab, struggled into my clothes, bundled her into a dressing gown, and we sped to St Mary's Paddington at just before 4am.
The flurry of action made the pain subside, if only through distraction, and we sat for hours while doctors brought forms to be filled, took her blood pressure and ran tests. A registrar poked a needle into my wife's wrist and said, "Does that hurt? Does that? How about that?" before concluding: "Impressive. You have a very high pain threshold."
More ...
https://mosaicscience.com/story/how-much-does-it-hurt-pain-agony-acute-chronic?
Friday, January 06, 2017
Snapshots of an Epidemic: A Look at the Opioid Crisis Across the Country - The New York Times
Opioid addiction is America's 50-state epidemic. It courses along Interstate highways in the form of cheap smuggled heroin, and flows out of "pill mill" clinics where pain medicine is handed out like candy. It has ripped through New England towns, where people overdose in the aisles of dollar stores, and it has ravaged coal country, where addicts speed-dial the sole doctor in town licensed to prescribe a medication.
Public health officials have called the current opioid epidemic the worst drug crisis in American history, killing more than 33,000 people in 2015. Overdose deaths were nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes. In 2015, for the first time, deaths from heroin alone surpassed gun homicides.
More ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/opioid-crisis-epidemic.html?
Public health officials have called the current opioid epidemic the worst drug crisis in American history, killing more than 33,000 people in 2015. Overdose deaths were nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes. In 2015, for the first time, deaths from heroin alone surpassed gun homicides.
More ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/opioid-crisis-epidemic.html?
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