News on the Treatment of Chronic Pain

​News from COPE

• Test Your Knowledge: Avoiding Deadly Combinations with Prescription Opioids. A quick quiz on dangers of mixing common drugs with opioids.
• COPE Release: Potentially deadly drug combinations routinely prescribed in treatment of chronic pain and mental health conditions. Study finds that rate of prescribing for prescription pain medications has slowed,while dangerous multi-drug use has not.
• COPE Interview: Prescribing Guidelines: David J. Tauben, MD, Medical Director, UW TelePain; Chief and Director of Medical Student and Resident Education, Division of Pain Medicine; Clinical Professor, Departments of Medicine and Anesthesia & Pain Medicine; Hughes M. & Katherine G. Blake Endowed Professorship in Health Psychology
• COPE Interview: Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS): Carla Saunders, NP, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, Knoxville, TN
• Quick Quiz: Who's most at risk with ER/LA Opioid Treatment?
• COPE Release: Health Care Providers on Front Lines as Washington State Decreases Rx Opioid Overdoses by 27% (17 March 2015)
• COPE/UW Medicine Release: Oregon ranks No. 1 in U.S. for Nonmedical Use of Opioids (16 September 2014)
• COPE Release: University of Washington’s interactive online training arms physicians with knowledge to curb prescription drug abuse (4 September 2014)

Other News

• When to Taper Patients Off Opioids: Mark Sullivan, MD, PhD, Outlines Steps for Opioid Tapering (MedPageToday.com, 16 December 2015)
• Treating chronic pain: When ‘How much does it hurt?’ isn’t enough (stat.com, November 30, 2015)
• Intensity of Chronic Pain — The Wrong Metric? Jane C. Ballantyne, M.D., and Mark D. Sullivan, M.D., Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2015; 373:2098-2099, November 26, 2015 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1507136
• OxyContin Poster Children 15 Years Later (video): Sobering follow-up to patients initially reporting successful use of Oxycontin, (Advocates for the Reform of Prescription Opioids, www.rxreform.org, September 2012).
• A Decades of Drug Overdoses: interactive graphics from the Coalition Against Drug Abuse. Overdoses have more than doubled since 2001, with an increasing percentage involving opioids (Sept. 2015)
• Potentially Deadly Drug Combinations Routinely Prescribed In Treatment of Chronic Pain  and Mental Health Conditions (Addiction Treatment Forum, August 11, 2015)
• Why Haven't Rates of Dangerous Co-Prescribing Dropped? (Monthly Prescribing Reference,7 August 2015)
• Study finds that rate of prescribing for prescription pain medications has slowed, while dangerous multi-drug use has not  (Medical News Today, 7 August 2015)
• Sedatives or Opioids: Which is the Bigger Problem? (Pain Network News, 7 August 2015) 
• 80% of women have poor relief of chronic pain from long-term opioid therapy. (Journal of Women's Health, August 2015)
• NIH analysis shows Americans are in pain. Report examines the prevalence, severity, and duration of pain. (Estimates of Pain Prevalence and Severity in Adults, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institutes of Health, August 2015)
• Warning: The Rise of Prescription Opioid Use During Pregnancy, includes comments by Alyssa Stephenson-Famy, assistant professor in the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine and assistant residency program director at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who authored the section on pregnancy in the Washington State 2015 Interagency Guideline on Prescribing Opioids for Pain. (ParentMap, 16 July 2015)
• Washington State releases 2015 Interagency Guideline on Prescribing Opioids for Pain.
• Do clinicians understand what abuse-deterrent opioids can and cannot do? (Clinical Journal of Pain, 23 June 2015; Johns Hopkins press release)
• Experts worry about the limitations of "abuse-deterrent" painkillers. (New York Times 6 June 2015)
• 28% of pregnant Tennessee women on Medicaid took opioid pain medicines, increasing risk of premature birth. A growing body of research is showing the risks of prescribing opioids to pregnant women. (Pediatrics, 10 February 2015)
• US Dept. of Health and Human Services calls for actions to address opioid-drug related overdoses and deaths (26 March 2015)
• A Comprehensive Approach to Address the Prescription Opioid Epidemic in Washington State: Milestones and Lessons Learned (American Journal of Public Health, March 2015)
• FDA draft report explores Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) for opioids and other products (September 2014)
• CDC Infographic: Health care providers in different states prescribe at different levels. (July 2014)
• Death rates from opioids decline nationally but remain 2X higher than heroin overdose death rates. (CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 3 October 2014)
• How effective is long-term opioid therapy for chronic pain? Efficacy is unproven, according to a September 2014 research review by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
• An October 2014 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) regulation allows pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, and other authorized collectors to serve as authorized drop-off sites for unused prescription drugs (Resources on Drug Disposal; Department of Justice press release, 8 September 2014)