The general population and many in the medical community alike harbor the popular opinion that using strong pain medications, including opioids, for long-term, chronic pain puts the patient at high risk of developing an addiction to the pain medications. A report presented recently at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society (APS) reveals evidence to the contrary.

Srinivasa Raja, MD, a professor of anesthesiology at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, reports that less than 3% of all patients suffering from chronic pain and who have no history of abusing drugs of any kind may eventually show signs of dependence or abuse when taking these medications pain relief. He urged the medical community to keep this very small percentage of risk in mind when establishing policies for prescribing such medications to patients who are far more likely to benefit from them than be endangered by them.

Raja also points to media attention surrounding an increase in the abuse of such medications but says these drugs are easily obtained from unregulated internet pharmacies and through theft and forgery of prescriptions, not just from within the legitimate medical establishment. While the established medical community is not the sole source of supply for these medications, Raja urges diligent communication between physician and patient, with patient screening procedures to identify addictive or potentially abusive behaviors becoming a routine part of the prescription and follow-up phases of treatment.

Raja further calls for uniformity in state and federal drug regulations and praises the teen drug awareness campaigns underway across the country as a means of preventing abuse of this type of drug. Raja says collaboration from the healthcare community, law enforcement agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry is needed to ensure people who need them will be allowed continued access to these medications, especially in the many cases where the benefits far exceed the risk of dependency.

Alternative treatments such as cognitive behavior and physical therapies should be used to supplement pain medications whenever possible, according to Raja. He says using this multi-faceted approach to pain management is much more effective than relying only on pain medications as the sole means of relief in most cases.

In his address to the APS, Raja cited past beliefs about pain that have been disproved by scientific evidence, such as that babies didn’t feel pain and therefore didn’t need anesthesia and that cancer patients should eschew the most potent and effective pain medications due to the supposed risk of addiction. These outdated beliefs have been proven wrong and he feels the fear of addiction should be abandoned as well in favor of effective treatment for pain management without the stigma of potential addiction influencing treatment options.

Source: American Pain Society