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Study finds postpartum women are getting prescribed more narcotics than needed

New University of Minnesota Medical School research finds postpartum women are generally getting prescribed more narcotics than they need.

21 Nov 2019

Clinical trial tests impact of actual and virtual nature on cancer patients

Researchers at Houston Methodist Cancer Center are exploring whether exposure to nature, through either a live garden or virtual reality, can alleviate pain and distress in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, possibly reducing the need for prescription narcotics.

4 Nov 2019

New study examines care for patients with knee osteoarthritis in the U.S.

A new study published in Arthritis Care & Research provides an overview of U.S. physicians' recommendations for physical therapy, lifestyle counseling, pain medications for treating knee osteoarthritis.

9 Oct 2019

People with severe insomnia may benefit from sedatives, shows study

Insomnia is a driver of suicide, and particularly people with severe insomnia may safely benefit from taking a sedative to help address their sleep problems as it reduces their suicidal thoughts, investigators report.

30 Sep 2019

Knowing when and how to taper off opioid dosage crucial to safe pain management

Many healthcare providers today try to avoid administering or prescribing opioid pain medications when possible because of the narcotics' addictive properties. But for some patients, opioid medications remain the most effective, most appropriate treatment for their subjective pain complaints.

20 Sep 2019

In India’s burgeoning pain market, U.S. drugmakers stand to gain

Pain, like death, is a universal phenomenon. The sour grimace on the woman's face, registering her bodily complaints to Dr. G.P. Dureja in his East Delhi office, would be recognized anywhere. Slouched shoulders, pinched forehead. She wore a willowy black kurta and cast a disapproving glance at the five pain physicians-in-training huddled behind Dureja, founder of Delhi Pain Management Centre and one of India's pioneering pain physicians.

28 Aug 2019

Doctors can change opioid prescribing habits, but progress comes in small doses

When they started practicing medicine, most surgeons say, there was little or no information about just how many pain pills patients needed after specific procedures.

14 Aug 2019

Opioid use score does not predict adverse patient outcomes after spinal surgery

An opioid use score based on state prescription databases does not predict complications or other adverse outcomes in patients undergoing spinal surgery, reports a study in the journal Spine.

29 Jul 2019

Federal suit alleges ‘staggering’ urine drug testing fraud at Tennessee pain clinics

The Justice Department on Monday accused a defunct chain of Tennessee-based pain clinics of cheating Medicare and other taxpayer-funded health insurers out of at least $25 million in needless urine drug tests and genetic testing.

23 Jul 2019

Change in care protocol of weight-reduction operations exceeds its desired effect

A change in the care protocol of patients undergoing weight-reduction operations exceeded its desired effect by cutting postoperative hospital stays in half, reducing postoperative hospital readmissions by 38 percent, and reducing the amount of opioids the patients were sent home with by 95 percent, according to study results from a large bariatric and metabolic surgery center in Charleston, S.C.

23 Jul 2019

Addressing patients' mental and emotional distress after surgery

With the advancement of technology and medicine, G. Michael Deeb, M.D., a cardiac surgeon at Michigan Medicine, says society is used to, and expects, instant solutions to their pain after medical procedures. This has resulted in an increased demand for narcotics, as well as their over usage.

17 Jul 2019

A Portable Solution for the On-scene Identification of Kratom

Zachary Lawton describes a portable GC-MS solution for the identification of Kratom and other drugs that cannot be identified using traditional colorimetric tests.

From Pittcon 16 Jul 2019

Patients treated with NSAIDs use less opioids

Patients receiving a post-surgery prescription of ibuprofen with a rescue prescription of Percocet used less opioids than a group of similar patients who were prescribed just Percocet.

12 Jul 2019

Florida is the latest Republican-led state to adopt clean needle exchanges

A green van was parked on the edge of downtown Miami, on a corner shadowed by overpasses. The vehicle serves as a mobile health clinic and syringe exchange, where people who inject drugs like heroin and fentanyl could swap dirty needles for fresh ones.

2 Jul 2019

Surgeons’ opioid-prescribing habits hard to kick

As opioid addiction and deadly overdoses escalated into an epidemic across the U.S., thousands of surgeons continued to hand out far more pills than needed for postoperative pain relief, according to a KHN-Johns Hopkins analysis of Medicare data.

21 Jun 2019

New pain management program sends 92% cancer surgery patients home with no opioids

A specialized pain management program for patients who underwent robotic surgery for urologic cancers resulted in just eight percent going home with narcotics after discharge, compared to 100 percent who would have received them without this enhanced recovery protocol.

23 May 2019

Amid opioid prescriber crackdown, health officials reach out to pain patients

A pharmacist in Celina, Tenn., was one of 60 people indicted on charges of opioid-related crimes last week, in a multistate sting. John Polston was charged with 21 counts of filling medically unnecessary narcotic prescriptions.

24 Apr 2019

Alcohol, Cannabis and Other Drugs: A Pharmacological Evaluation

Understanding the interactions between alcohol and cannabis can provide researchers, clinicians and other HCPs with important information on the severity of their side effects.

10 Apr 2019

America's teens report dramatic increase in their use of vaping devices in just one year

America's teens report a dramatic increase in their use of vaping devices in just a single year, with 37.3 percent of 12th graders reporting "any vaping" in the past 12 months, compared to just 27.8 percent in 2017.

17 Dec 2018

Fentanyl surpasses heroin in cause of U.S. drug overdose deaths

According to a new report from health officials, Fentanyl – a synthetic opioid drug, is surpassing heroin as cause of drug overdose deaths in the United States. The report was released 12th of December 2018 in the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Report.

13 Dec 2018