Thinking Outside the Pill Box: Another Approach to Pain Management

By Alon Ironi, CEO, Theranica Bio-Electronics

Well into my adulthood, I struggled with chronic back pain. I took medication after medication, finding myself getting sucked into the habit of popping painkillers and wondering why my pain wasn’t healing. I eventually discovered the psychological and mental elements inherent in chronic pain, and shifted my approach to pain management, which rapidly cured my back pain.  

The holistic approach to healing pain has historically been ridiculed in the medical community, preventing many physicians from recognizing the legitimacy of alternative treatments. The time has come to evolve beyond just popping pills to treat pain, towards a biopsychosocial perspective.  

The discovery and introduction of penicillin in 1928, marked the very beginning of medication popularization in the West. The development of new medications – for a wide range of uses - has extended life span and improved quality of life.  Unfortunately, the benefits associated with medication have encouraged its frequent use for disorders it simply is not meant for, such as certain types of chronic pain.  

Medication overuse headache is one example where drugs intended to treat migraine and headache can, with excessive use, lead to the deterioration of the exact condition they are supposed to be treating. Medication is an incredible tool when used properly, but it’s not the only tool, and it can be seriously harmful when misapplied.

What is Pain and How Do We Treat It? 

Pain is a unique bodily experience that, unlike other disorders, indicates an underlying issue in one’s physiology. Pain is an alarm system. It tells us that something is wrong, and if we mask it without treating its underlying cause, we might cause a great disservice to our bodies.  

The use of medication to treat short-term acute pain, while a person simultaneously heals from the cause of that pain, like a pulled muscle or a tear in a tissue, makes sense. However, the use of medication in instances of chronic pain - pain that persists longer than three months - is problematic.  

Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that impacts an individual’s everyday life. From migraine to chronic knee pain to chronic back pain, the routine of normal life is disrupted. Often, this chronic pain had an initial cause, such as a surgery, fall or injury that has since healed, but the pain persists long after its source has disappeared. This type of pain, as Haider Warraich, a physician and clinical researcher at Harvard, so aptly puts it, is like “an overlearned traumatic memory that keeps ricocheting around in our brains, often long after the injury it rehearses has fully healed.” 

This perception of chronic pain has its roots in quite a controversial physician -the late Jon Sarno, MD, a professor of rehabilitation medicine in the 1980’s and 90’s. His theories, while not rigorously proven in formal clinical studies, were built upon anecdotal data from thousands of patients he treated during his lifetime and are still being explored today. They have jumpstarted a revolution in our understanding of pain.  

The biopsychosocial model focuses on illness as a complex interaction of chemical and electrical reactions that are induced by biological, psychological and social factors. Contemporary pain researchers, like Lorimer Mosely, a clinical scientist, have applied this model to pain, recognizing that pain is comprised of both physical sensation and emotional stimulus, such as the fear of pain itself.  

Pain is no longer perceived as entirely “physical” in nature. It is now understood to be exacerbated by the fear of tissue damage and the aversion to previously experienced pain. As clinical research develops and shifts its focus to a more biopsychosocial approach to illness and pain, doctors must re-evaluate their first-line treatment suggestions. 

Drug-Free Pain Management 

Based on this new perception of pain, several nonpharmacological treatment methods for pain management have been developed. One approach is a purely psychological treatment called cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of talk therapy that discourages negative thoughts associated with pain and trains people to adhere to thoughts that stimulate the body’s natural pain relief system. Another example of nonpharmacological pain treatment is massage therapy,  which addresses pain by releasing muscle tension.  

Neuromodulation is highly effective in treating certain pain disorders through the use of electrical stimulation to modulate pain pathways in the neural system.  Several forms of neuromodulation treatment exist today, with different mechanisms of action and efficacy.  

Spinal cord stimulation, for example, is used to treat back pain and leg pain. But it is highly invasive, with electrodes surgically placed near the spinal cord to send electrical currents to the spine.

Deep brain stimulation is being studied for the relief of chronic pain, but it is also quite invasive, as it involves implanting electrodes into the brain.  

Nerivio is a non-invasive, wearable neuromodulation device made by my company that is FDA-approved for the treatment of acute migraine. Nerivio is self-applied to the upper arm, where it uses remote electrical neuromodulation (REN) to stimulate analgesic neurotransmitters in the pain pathways of migraine. In clinical trials, Nerivio and other REN devices have been shown to be just as effective as pharmacological treatments.  

To be clear, medication is a necessary and beneficial tool for treating infections, reducing fever, managing sickness and much more. However, its use in chronic pain management is sometimes misplaced, especially at a time when newer non-drug therapies are emerging.  

The holistic approach to pain management is the future. It considers the balance and context of a patient’s life and combines multiple modalities for their treatment. People are multifaceted and their treatment should be multifaceted as well. It is my hope and vision that this field of research will continue to develop and will soon be widely embraced by most medical professionals.  

Having experienced the benefits of drug-free pain management first-hand, I truly hope that health care systems will support patients in accessing these much-needed alternative treatments to improve quality of care and life.  

Alon Ironi is the CEO and co-founder of Theranica Bio-Electronics, the developer of Nerivio.

Alon received a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology.

Do You Get Adequate Pain Management?

By Victoria Reed, PNN Columnist

For the last few weeks, I’ve been suffering from persistent sinus and dental pain. Sinus pain is not new to me, as I have long-standing allergies which cause swelling in the nasal passages and chronic congestion that sometimes leads to an infection. The medications that I take for my rheumatoid arthritis increase the risk for all types of infections, as they suppress the immune system.  

After seeing a doctor, a sinus infection was diagnosed. Towards the end of a course of antibiotics, I had marked improvement with the sinus symptoms, but was still having considerable pain when chewing, which radiated to my right ear and jaw.  

Initially, I assumed that the pain was related to the sinus infection, but when that didn’t go away after finishing the antibiotics, I made an appointment to see my dentist. He did the usual poking and prodding around my gums and teeth, trying to find the source of the pain, and discovered two areas that could be the culprits. He did a flushing procedure of the gums to try to alleviate the pain. 

However, after the procedure was completed, I had such severe pain that all I could do was hold my head in my hands, while tears seeped out of my eyes. The pain was as bad as the pain I had felt while giving birth without an epidural! 

After more than a few minutes, my face and jaw continued to throb and the pain had not subsided. The dentist could see that I was in quite a bit of distress. He then asked me what the pain level was before I had come in. I replied that it had been a 5, but “now it’s a 10.”  

He sat down beside me and tried to explain what he believed the problem was. It was hard to concentrate, but I was able to understand what he was saying. He told me that he thought a tooth was cracked and that I needed to see an endodontist, a root canal specialist. He also prescribed another antibiotic.  

The dentist then stood up and patted me on the shoulder with compassion. Clearly, he was sorry for having amplified my pain. I appreciated his compassion, but I was ready to leave. At that point, all I wanted was to move on to whichever provider could relieve the awful pain.  

Then, to my surprise, I was offered opioid pain medication! 

This was something I absolutely did not expect. I had root canals for severe infections in the past, but no prescription opioids had been offered and I was sent home with instructions to take over-the-counter pain relievers. The days of getting opioid medication for severe dental pain were over, I assumed.  

However, after my initial shock, I politely declined the prescription. Why? Because I already receive a mild prescription opioid for my chronic pain conditions. Sure, I could have taken the prescription and not said a word about that, but I knew that I should honor the pain management contract I had signed with my doctor.  

While I believed that a stronger medication would have been helpful for my tooth pain, I did not want to risk being ejected from my pain management program. My contract (and nearly all pain management contracts) explicitly states that I am not allowed to receive any additional opioids from any other provider.  

I turned down the possibility of immediate relief of my dental pain so that I wouldn’t lose my regular prescription for chronic pain. I felt that I had no other choice. In addition, I didn’t want to be “red-flagged” by the pharmacy as a drug seeker, even though I did have a legitimate need for the new prescription.  

The pendulum has swung too far in the effort to control opioid overdoses and many people do not receive appropriate medications to treat their pain. I realize that I am one of the lucky ones to still get a prescription opioid, and I feel for those who aren’t as fortunate as me.  

Every patient should advocate for themselves, but if you are unable or afraid to, try having a family member or friend do it for you. Don’t settle for treatment that is less than optimal. If you are unhappy with your treatment or have intolerable side effects, discuss it with your doctor and ask for a different treatment plan. Doctors generally want to help, but some may feel that their hands are tied when it comes to prescribing opioids.  

Unfortunately, chronic pain patients must continue to jump through hoops in order to be treated ethically, fairly and adequately. Many are denied appropriate treatment due to prescribing limits and doctors’ fear of prosecution for prescribing opioids. I am hopeful that with the upcoming revision of the CDC opioid guideline, things will change for the better.  

Victoria Reed lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She suffers from endometriosis, fibromyalgia, degenerative disc disease and rheumatoid arthritis. 

Integrative and Comprehensive Pain Management Provide Only Small Benefits

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

As concerns rose in recent years about opioid addiction and overdoses, it became trendy for healthcare providers to offer “comprehensive” or “integrative” pain management programs to patients – usually a combination of medication, physical and behavioral therapy, lifestyle changes and alternative treatments such as massage and acupuncture.

But a new study commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) found that integrative and comprehensive pain management provide only small improvements in pain and function for people with chronic pain.   

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) reviewed 57 “fair quality” clinical studies, most involving patients with moderate chronic pain caused by fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal conditions. Although the improvements in pain and function were small and the evidence limited, researchers concluded that integrative (IPMP) and comprehensive (CPMP) pain management programs worked about as well as individual treatments.

“Our review suggested that IPMPs and CPMPs may provide small to moderate improvements in function and small improvements in pain for patients with chronic pain compared with usual care and may be more effective than some medications alone. The average improvements in function and pain in our review were consistent with those reported for other therapies for pain, including opioids for chronic pain, nonpharmacologic treatments, and surgery,” researchers found.

One of the problems researchers encountered was the mish-mash of terms used to define integrative and comprehensive pain management – such as multimodal, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and biopsychosocial – the meaning of which often varies from provider to provider. Researchers said there was “no firm consensus on their definition or use,” which made it harder to evaluate their effectiveness. Only a few of the reviewed studies compared treatments head-to-head and many were of poor quality.

Although none of the trials specifically included Medicare patients, researchers concluded that IPMPs and CPMPs should be more widely used to address pain in the Medicare population.   

“To the extent that programs are tailored to patients’ needs, our findings are potentially applicable to the Medicare population. Programs that address a range of biopsychosocial aspects of pain, tailor components to patient need, and coordinate care may be of particular importance in this population,” they said. 

“Although use of selected individual treatments may serve some patients, a broader range of therapies that address the full scope of biopsychosocial concerns available in formal programs may benefit others. Research in the Medicare population and in patients with a broader range of pain conditions is needed as is research on the impact of program structures, coordination methods, and components on patient outcomes. Additional evidence from primary care-based programs is particularly needed.” 

One of the co-authors of the AHRQ study is Dr. Roger Chou, a primary care physician who heads the Pacific Northwest Evidence-based Practice Center at OHSU.  Chou, who co-authored the 2016 CDC opioid guideline, is a prolific researcher who has collaborated on several occasions with members of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP), an anti-opioid advocacy group.

PROP Vice President Gary Franklin, MD, “provided input” on the AHRQ study, as well as others.

In July, Chou declared a conflict of interest and recused himself from a meeting of the CDC’s Board of Scientific Counselors, which is evaluating a revision and possible expansion of the agency’s controversial guideline. Chou’s recusal apparently applied only to that meeting, as he is one of the co-authors of the revised opioid guideline — which has yet to be released publicly — and continues his involvement in federally funded pain research. 

OHSU researchers have conducted a series of reviews on a wide variety of pain therapies for the AHRQ. According to the website GovTribe, over the last five years OHSU has been awarded over $2 billion in federal grants for medical research. 

A group of patient advocates and researchers recently called for a congressional or DOJ investigation of the CDC opioid guideline, due to Chou’s significant role in writing it and his then-undeclared conflicts of interest.

How I Learned To Live With and Manage Chronic Pain

By Beth Thorp, Guest Columnist

The CDC estimates that 50 million Americans – just over 20 percent of the adult population – have chronic pain.  About 20 million have “high-impact chronic pain,” which is defined as pain severe enough to frequently limit life or work activities. I am one of the “high-impact” ones.

For a long time, I did not believe that I had enough expertise or a unique enough story to share my experiences with pain, except with those closest to me.  But because of how often people tell me, “I don’t know how you do it!”; I began to believe that sharing my struggle to live with and manage chronic pain might help others who also suffer from it.

Like many others with severe chronic pain, I have had experience with using opioids.  Given the crackdown on doctors prescribing these medications, I felt that sharing all the other skills I use to manage my pain might be useful to other patients. 

I believe there are three aspects of our health which must be addressed if we are to have full and productive lives despite our pain. These are physical health, mental health and socialization.

Three-Part Model for Pain Management

Physical Health

When pain begins, the first and logical area to address is our physical health. It’s important to me to rely not just on pain medication, but a wide range of other modalities. These include:

• Physical therapy, including heat, ice, ultrasound, stretching, exercises, TENS

• Injections of steroids and analgesics

• Neuromodulation devices such as spinal cord stimulators

• The use of support tools, such as canes, walkers, wheelchairs, etc.

Some activities, like stretching, might be easy to incorporate into your daily life.  Exercise might take some trial and error to find types that help with pain and that you enjoy. Others, like using a wheelchair, might take overcoming the burden of stigma.   

For me, the idea of getting a wheelchair was initially out of the question.  But then my pain doctor suggested that it would be better to use one to travel in places like airports, museums and zoos so that I can better enjoy the experience, and have less pain during and afterwards.  Once I thought of it this way, it was an easier choice.

Mental Health

As my pain persisted, despite many physical and medical treatments, it became clear to me that I needed some additional resources to help my mind and spirit.  These treatments used to be considered outside of traditional Western medicine.  Additionally, these methods often require out-of-pocket payment. Some examples are:

• Counseling, talk therapy, hypnosis, Reiki

• Meditation and mindfulness

• Participation in activities designed to distract from the pain

• Antidepressant medications

• Focusing on the positive

There are other therapies which address both physical and mental health, including yoga, Pilates, acupuncture, therapeutic massage and tai chi. 

I rely more on distraction than on any other technique.  If one activity does not work, then I will go to another.  When I first heard about distraction, I did not believe that it would work -- but it really does.  Even getting out of one environment into another can help. 

I am still working on the technique of focusing on the positive rather than the negative.  I know this sounds a bit Pollyanna, but I believe it is important to move ahead with a good quality of life.  The goal is to be grateful for the things I can do, not ruminating on the things I have lost or can no longer do. Some examples of this are:

• Take “one day at a time.”  If today is bad, tomorrow is likely to be better

• Try new activities that fit within the scope of your current abilities

• Learn new skills or explore new areas to learn by taking classes, in person or online

• Find others who suffer from chronic pain and share ideas for living better

• Most of all, don’t give up! 

Socialization

The longer pain goes on, the more isolating it can be. I’ve experienced loneliness and solitude. Our world gets smaller as the number of things we can do shrinks and the things we can do become very restricted. 

One of the hardest things for many of us is to ask for help. Similarly, we don’t want to be a burden, so we don’t reach out to ask our friends and family to come over and spend time with us. 

In order to maintain a good quality of life, we must find our own ways to become or stay involved with others.  For example:

• Phone calls or Skype, FaceTime and Zoom meetings with family and friends

• Group activities such as book clubs, crafting circles, games nights, group lunches

To address mental health as well as socialization, joining a religious group, community organization or chronic pain support group can be very helpful.  You can also combine socialization and physical health with activities such as exercise classes or Silver Sneaker programs.

Three Changes Needed

I believe that there are three changes to our healthcare system which must be pursued in order to respond to the opioid crisis in ways that help patients with pain, not hurt them.

First, don’t punish patients by removing access to opioid medications. For some of us, they are the only thing that works. Work with us to help us take them responsibly. 

Second, the pharmaceutical industry should develop safe, effective and non-addictive pain medications for those of us with high impact chronic pain. 

Third, insurance companies should be required to pay for alternative treatments such as massage, acupuncture, yoga, etc. that are often recommended as alternatives to opioids. Those options are not really available to most patients with pain.

Chronic pain may last a lifetime.  Thus, it is critical to find ways to live a full and happy life despite the pain.  Different methods work for different people.  I believe that the most important thing is to try everything you can.  If one doesn’t work, try another.  Be sure to include physical, mental and social solutions.  And try to stay as positive as possible.  That’s how I do it.  You can do it too! 

Beth Thorp has lived with chronic pain from sciatica, neuropathy and osteoarthritis for almost 25 years. She’s had multiple back surgeries, including two implanted stimulators.

Beth worked for 34 years in the pharmaceutical industry, including as a partner in her own consulting firm. She is now retired and spends her time with her family, as well as knitting, quilting, reading and exercising.

PNN invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org

How Pacing Can Stop the Boom-Bust Cycle of Pain

By Gabriella Kelly-Davies, PNN Columnist

Many people living with chronic pain are stuck in a boom-bust cycle. I was one of them until I took part in a multidisciplinary pain management program and learned how to pace my activities and exercises.

On the good days when our pain level is low, we try to catch up on doing all the things we couldn’t do when the pain was bad the previous day. But this can cause a flare-up and the natural response is to rest or take a pain medication. Once the pain eases, we might try again, only to repeat the pattern of overactivity, flare-up, rest, easing of pain, then overactivity.

When this happens repeatedly, we can become frustrated and despair of ever being able to live a normal life. It becomes difficult to plan ahead because we never know how we will be on any day. Over time, there are fewer good days and more bad days and we feel as if we have lost control of our life. We become so afraid of causing a flare-up that we avoid any activity that aggravates our pain.

The end result is that our bodies lose conditioning and become less able to cope with a higher level of activity. Muscles weaken, joints stiffen, and less and less activity causes a flare-up.

The good news is that we can use a pain management technique known as pacing to increase our activity levels without stirring up the pain. Pacing involves starting at a level of activity that doesn’t aggravate our pain, breaking up tasks into smaller steps, gradually increasing the amount we do, and taking frequent, small breaks. Over time, it is possible to increase our tolerance to a range of daily activities and exercises. 

Set Goals and Build Up Gradually

Pacing can be applied to everything you do. If sitting increases your lower back pain, try to use pacing to build up your sitting tolerance. You can also pace exercises such as walking and swimming, and use it to increase your tolerance to activities such as housework, gardening and driving.

The first step is to decide which activities or exercises are your priorities, then determine your baseline tolerance to them. A starting point 20 percent below your current level is a general rule of thumb. If sitting exacerbates your lower back pain, determine how long you can sit comfortably. If you can sit for five minutes without triggering a flare-up, set your baseline at 80 percent of five minutes, which is four minutes.

Once you know your baseline, set short and long-term goals and record them in a chart. Each day, increase the time you do the activity or exercise by a predetermined small amount.

If your long-term goal is to sit and watch a movie for two hours without causing a flare-up and your baseline is four minutes, your short-term goal might be to increase your sitting by one minute each day. At the end of the week if you can sit comfortably for 10 minutes, you can repeat this pattern for the following weeks until you reach two hours. However, if you find that increasing by one minute every day stirs up your pain, try increasing by one minute every second or third day.

Record your progress in a chart like the one below so you can see how much you are building sitting tolerance.

SHORT-TERM GOALS

SITTING PROGRESS

Break Up Activities

Pacing also involves breaking up tasks into smaller amounts that don’t cause a flare-up. If carrying heavy bags of groceries from the supermarket exacerbates your back pain, try buying smaller amounts of groceries more often. For example, go to the supermarket three times a week and buy small amounts rather than doing one big shop each week.

Taking short and frequent breaks is another way of gradually building up your tolerance to an activity. For example, if you can weed your garden for 10 minutes without flaring up your pain, make your baseline 80 percent of 10 minutes, which is eight minutes. Work in the garden for eight minutes, rest for 15 to 30 minutes, garden for another eight minutes, rest for 15 to 30 minutes, and so on. During your rest period, it’s a good idea to practice your relaxation exercises and stretches.

As your tolerance to gardening increases, you can gradually build up the time you garden before you rest.

Fine-Tuning Your Plan

Pacing is a process of trial and error, and your initial goals might need to be fine-tuned if you find that pain interferes with you achieving them. Try to be patient and don’t overdo it. It’s better to take baby steps and achieve your goals than to race ahead and fall back into the boom-bust cycle.

It’s crucial you stick with your plan each day. If you are having a good low-pain day, don’t be tempted to increase each activity for longer than the predetermined time because you might risk flaring up your pain. On the other hand, if you are having a bad day, try to stick with your goals for the day, but take brief breaks and do your relaxation exercises and stretches during the breaks.

Pacing is an important part of an armory of pain management strategies. Like other multidisciplinary pain management approaches, it takes time to learn, but once you master the technique, it will put you in control of your day rather than your pain level dictating what you can and can’t do.

By keeping to your plan in a disciplined way, you will gradually build up your tolerance to activities of daily living and leisure. With practice, you, rather than your pain level, will determine how much you can do, giving you more control and a better quality of life.

Gabriella Kelly-Davies is a biographer who lives with chronic migraine.  She recently authored “Breaking Through the Pain Barrier,” a biography of trailblazing Australian pain specialist Dr. Michael Cousins. Gabriella is President of Life Stories Australia Association and founder of Share your life story.

Ideology Is Guiding Pain Care, Not Science

By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist

An overarching question in pain management and the opioid crisis is whether or not prescription opioids have any value in treating chronic non-cancer pain. 

Some say that the answer is a resounding “No.” Studies to date on the effectiveness of opioids are often too small, methodologically weak or too short-term to be convincing. But these same studies are often used to claim lack of efficacy, and for the same reasons they cannot do that.

At present, we don’t know if or how well opioids work for chronic pain. To establish efficacy, we’d need major studies or clinical trials that run for years, using many hundreds or even thousands of patients. Opioids would need to be compared to placebo or other treatments for various forms of chronic non-cancer pain, from inflammatory and autoimmune conditions to neuropathies and genetic disorders.

Such studies have not been done. A U.S. government website that tracks clinical studies lists 685 trials for “opioids and chronic pain,” with several terminated or withdrawn, others just now recruiting, and only a handful completed. Many of these studies look at substance use disorders, tapering or de-prescribing, or are small-scale efforts at comparing two opioids.

There are no large-scale studies of opioids for chronic non-cancer pain getting started or underway at present.

There are over 14,500 studies on “opioids and chronic pain” listed in PubMed, a database maintained by the National Institutes of Health. One of the few that looked at long-term use of opioids is the 2018 SPACE study, which found that opioids were not superior to non-opioid medications over 12 months.

But the SPACE study has important limitations: It only looked at patients with chronic back pain or osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. Researchers also put the opioid tramadol in the non-opioid group and let some patients switch from the non-opioid to the opioid arm in order to achieve good analgesia.

Another study found that only one in five patients benefited from long-term opioid therapy, with young and middle-aged women showing the least improvement in pain and function. But this was a telephone survey that relied on a pain scale to assess outcomes, with no mention of diagnoses and no randomization or placebo control.

Similar studies with more positive outcomes can be found. According to a Cochrane review, the opioid tapentadol (Nucynta) worked better than oxycodone and a placebo in treating chronic musculoskeletal pain. But the clinical significance of this finding is uncertain.

In other words, we don’t have the kinds of studies we need to figure out if opioids work for chronic pain. This means that when people claim there is no good evidence for opioids in long-term pain management, they have a point. But for the same reason, there is no good evidence against opioid efficacy, either.

Of course, there is good evidence about opioid risks. As PNN reported, an Australian study found that people on long-term opioids do sometimes engage in risky behavior such as filling a prescription early. But this study didn’t find major risks of dose escalation, diversion or overdose that are often claimed to be common.

The solution would be to do major trials. But there seems to be little incentive to do this. The opioid crisis and associated ideological debate about drug legalization have combined with lawsuits and public health policy to remove any motivation to find out more about efficacy. The results of such a study could sway outcomes in the ongoing opioid litigation or ignite new lawsuits, or could even cripple advocacy groups on either side of the opioid divide.

There are, arguably, subtle incentives not to pursue high-quality clinical trials on opioids for long-term pain management. Instead, we’re seeing lots of meta-analyses, reviews, and retrospective studies, none of which is particularly convincing because summarizing old studies with known weaknesses generally cannot answer big questions.

For the foreseeable future, we may be stuck with ideology instead of science guiding clinical pain care.

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research. 

Individualized Pain Care After Surgery Raises Patient Satisfaction

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

An opioid prescribing guideline tailored to a patient’s specific needs – that doesn’t take a one-size-fits-all approach – resulted in high patient satisfaction rates and reduced the use of opioids after surgery.

The post-operative pain management guideline was developed by surgeons at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, who based the number of opioid pills sent home with patients on how many they needed the day before they were discharged from the hospital. Other guidelines typically base the number of pills on the type of operation that was performed and do not take into account a patient’s individual needs.

“In this new prospective study we found that 93 percent of patients had their post-surgery opioid needs satisfied,” said lead author Richard Barth Jr., MD, section chief of general surgery. “This finding means that this guideline can be used for a wide variety of operations to guide surgeons on how many opioids to prescribe when sending patients home after surgery.”

Barth and his colleagues enrolled 229 patients in the study who had elective general surgery, including colorectal, gynecological, thoracic and urological operations. Upon discharge, patients received prescriptions for acetaminophen and ibuprofen, as well as opioids, based on the guideline.

If they needed no opioids the day before discharge, they were sent home with the morphine milligram equivalent (MME) of five oxycodone 5mg pills. If they took one or three pills, they were given a prescription for 15 more. And if they needed four or more pills, they were given a prescription for 30 pills.  

Patient satisfaction was highest among those who needed the fewest number of pills. Despite being given an opioid prescription, 73 percent of the patients who were prescribed five pills used no opioids at home, and 85 percent used two pills or less.

In all, 60 percent of patients in the study had leftover opioid pills, according to findings published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. They were given instruction on how to dispose of them safely.

Barth says surgeons played a pivotal role in minimizing opioid use by talking to patients before surgery and setting their expectations for pain management. They told patients they were likely to be discharged with either no opioids or a small amount based on their opioid use in the hospital.

“The other part of that discussion involves letting patients know that they should expect some pain, that our goal isn’t to get rid of every last bit of their pain,” Barth said. “That was something that surgeons tried to accomplish years ago, but that’s not what we’re aiming for now. A low level of discomfort is acceptable, and patients need to have that expectation.”

That process also including prescribing, not just recommending, over-the-counter pain relievers.  

“By prescribing non-opioid analgesics, the surgeon sets the expectation that they should be used,” he said. “It’s a big difference if a surgeon prescribes non-opioid analgesics compared with just recommending that a patient take acetaminophen or ibuprofen that they might have at home.” 

In recent years, many U.S. hospitals have adopted policies that reduce or completely eliminate the use of opioids after surgery. Those policies unfairly leave some patients in pain, according to a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons. Researchers found that about half of patients need opioid medication after major surgeries.

“Our goal is to give them the exact right amount so that we limit the number of un-used opioids in our community while also making sure we don’t reduce it down too far and then leave them in pain,” said lead author Cornelius Thiels, DO, a surgical oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“The right answer may be more non-opioid based pain medications, better patient education and setting of expectations, or in some cases patients may actually require slightly more opioid medications, and that is OK.”

My Pain Doctor Abandoned Me, But I'm Not Going Away Quietly

By CindyLee Calaluca, Guest Columnist

Recently I was terminated by my pain management physician without notice and with no plan for continued care. Why? I complained to the physician that I did not appreciate getting no call back when I repeatedly contacted his practice — over an 8-day period — to report that my chronic pain now had a severe acute component to it.

The acute problem is caused by a severe deep vein thrombosis, extending from the groin to the toes in my left leg – the result of a surgical wound from a toe amputation tearing open from severe swelling. Additionally, an old pressure ulcer had abscessed. The acute pain I am experiencing is because of an overlap with my poorly controlled chronic pain, thanks to the CDC guideline for prescribing opioid medication.

All I can do now, because of the pain, is lay in bed and force myself to sleep to cope with the pain. I am totally incapacitated and unable to do daily activities independently. I am 70 years old, a widow, and my only living relative is a 69-year-old brother who lives 2,000 miles from me.

The physician responded to me inappropriately. He told me he gets 3,000 phone calls a day and saw no reason to respond me, because there was nothing he was going to do about my pain. Furthermore, he had an arrogant demeanor and feels he isn't required to call me. I get an appointment once a month with him and that's where his responsibility for my care ends, he said.

Naturally, that opened the door wide open to abandonment and neglect of a patient. His practice has no after-hour or weekend coverage beyond an answering service.

Before he walked out on me, he insulted my career experience, called me uneducated, and said I didn't know what I was talking about regarding health care or laws.

It is a shame that in his superiority complex, he forgot, if he ever knew, my career or educational background. You see, I am an adult and geriatric nurse practitioner who holds a doctorate in nursing practice with 55 years of clinical experience, along with 20 years of simultaneous healthcare administration. That physician is about to find out how "uneducated, stupid and wrong" I actually am.

That's the story behind my being abandoned and put in my place for complaining. I tried to be nice and have an adult conversation with this man. What a shame his child showed up!

I completely understand the problems created when patients arbitrarily lose their providers without adequate and proper notice. I live in a community of less than 500 people. The nearest pain management practice that uses oral medication is 45 miles away. The next one is two and a half hours away. Then there's University of Alabama Medical Center, which is six hours away. Right, I'll just pop into the pain center tomorrow. Like that's happening.

I have had it with all the buck passing by politicians, law enforcement agents, and the CDC making doctors too afraid to practice pain management correctly. Putting a sign in the lobby stating that under no circumstance does the practice treat pain is not correct medical intervention. In fact, since pain is a symptom of illness and that the body is imperiled, it is turning a blind eye to abandonment.

I am no longer going to be a good patient and not respect myself. I refuse to play the game anymore. Since I am dying, I am not going quietly into the night. I am going to advocate and do so loudly, visibly and boldly. I will advocate for patients one last time.

CindyLee Calaluca lives in Alabama. Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org.

My Doctor Was Fired for Not Treating My Chronic Pain

By Chris Jolley, Guest Columnist

I was with my pain doctor for 20 years at the same clinic and on the same dosage until April 2017, when the medication that controlled my pain was stopped.  I had gone for a routine follow-up when a new doctor I had never seen walked into the exam room to tell me he was stopping all pain medication for each patient within one month.  

I have spina bifida, scoliosis, fibromyalgia, chronic kidney stones, and more. My worst pain is from migraines, including chronic cluster migraines, several ruptured discs from a back injury, and severe disc degeneration.  

Because of the migraines, my husband created a dark room and I spend most of my time in there.  My back pain makes me change positions every hour.  I do not get much sleep.  

Last year I had one of the worst cluster migraines. On its 5th day, I had a flare up from my disc rupture and my chronic kidney stones started dropping. I was in horrific pain.

I have a pain contract, so my son called the clinic to let them know he was taking me to the emergency room.  He was told he could take me, but under no circumstances could they give me any pain medication.

CHRIS JOLLEY

My son called 3 more times and on the third call was told we needed permission from the doctor, who had already left for the day. The next day, my son was told the same thing. The ER could not treat my pain.

No one should suffer horrific pain. But pain patients are being abandoned by doctors and profiled by pharmacists who refuse to fill our prescriptions, even for cancer.  A family pet would never be allowed to live in such pain.

Before April 2017, I was happy, able to work, involved in many craft projects, and saw my daughter and grandchildren often, even though they live 40 miles away.  

After months of appointments with the new doctor, I told him that I think about suicide every day and sometimes every hour because of the pain.  He did not even look at me and walked out the door.

This doctor was fired for what he did to me, and the doctor who replaced him put me back on pain medication. I was shocked by this.  

I took the new prescriptions to 3 large pharmacy chains and they refused to fill them, citing the 2016 CDC opioid guideline as law.  Fortunately, a few months later, I found a local pharmacy that had no problem filling the prescriptions. I am doing so much better now.

Chris Jolley lives in Utah.  

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org. 

The information in this column is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Do Doctors Care?

By Katie Burge, Guest Columnist

Tell me... exactly when did it become acceptable for physicians to not only harm, but to actually contribute to a patient's demise by denying adequate, necessary medical care? 

I'm referring to the rising death rate among chronic pain patients, whose doctors have yielded to political pressure and reduced their patients’ doses of pain medication to the point that they are virtually useless or refused to continue prescribing pain medication at all -- regardless of diagnosis or need -- because they fear regulatory action if they continue treating pain with opioids.  

Am I missing something? Under the Hippocratic Oath, aren't physicians supposed to strive to do no harm?  Or should we just start calling it the Hypocritical Oath when it comes to people in pain?

You might think that denying opioids to folks can only be a positive thing, but for those of us who suffer from severe, round-the-clock pain that only responds to opioids, this scenario is a nightmare.  Losing access to the only thing that lessens your pain can feel like a death sentence. And in some cases, it is.

Being forcibly tapered off opioids and then having to cope with the full brunt of your pain causes extreme stress, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.  Even worse, it causes some patients to lose hope of ever attaining help and commit suicide.

This almost happened to me last year. The really shocking thing is when I told a couple of my doctors that I was becoming increasingly suicidal because of pain, they just ignored me.

I guess they felt like if they acknowledged the reasons for my depression, they might have to address my pain. That is unacceptable to many physicians nowadays. I call this the "Ostrich" School of Medicine — where the doctors bury their heads in the sand whenever the topic of chronic pain comes up.

Many doctors have become so desensitized to pain and suffering that they seem to believe they're absolved of any responsibility when presented with a patient whose chronic pain is so severe that it only responds to opioids. They'll fall all over themselves trying to get away from us.

My longtime family doctor refuses to even discuss my chronic pain. And when pain management specialists see the catalog of all my conditions, they visibly cringe. It’s as though I make them feel threatened, when the real threat comes from bumbling bureaucrats attempting to prove that they aren't completely impotent when it comes to dealing with the opioid epidemic.

A major truth about the opioid epidemic is that these bureaucrats can't do a damn thing about recreational drug use, but they want their constituents to believe they can. So in a lame attempt at proving their political prowess, they put the squeeze on pain management physicians and blame vulnerable pain patients for other people's opioid abuse.

What really makes my jaw drop in astonishment is the fact that most doctors simply kowtow to this bureaucratic lunacy without even trying to advocate for their patients or their own right to treat patients to the full extent of their education and experience. Doctors should never be put in the position of having to choose between incarceration and providing compassionate medical care.

There aren't many courageous physicians left who will help somebody like me.  I did eventually find one who gives me about half the medication I need to get through a month and be able to function. This enabled me to survive my “suicidal” level of pain, but I wouldn't actually call it living. 

My round-the-clock pain is being treated with a short-acting opioid that I'm only allowed to take once every 8 hours, because the doctor says he's not "allowed" to prescribed the long-acting, time released opioids anymore. These extended relief medications provide much better, more even relief -- often at a lower dose than the immediate release, short-acting opioids.

My current drug regimen creates kind of an evil roller coaster effect, where I'm okay for 3 or 4 hours and then the pain spikes for the next 4 hours until I can take another dose. And then the roller coaster takes off all over again.

Over the past 20 years, I've tried every traditional and alternative treatment known to medical science. Some have been beneficial and some have not, but I've learned what is safe and effective for me. I just wish my doctor would take my word for it. I know I'll never be pain free and surgeons say they're unable to "fix" me, so pain management is the only option I have left.

I am alive today due to a combination of God's grace and the adrenaline created by a combination of righteous indignation and an intense passion to help other pain patients and educate the public about chronic pain.

If you are a pain patient or you love a pain patient, please speak up and be counted if you're not getting the treatment you deserve. Never give up!

Katie Burge lives in Mississippi. Katie has degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, failed back syndrome, stenosis, osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. 

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org. 

The information in this column is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Are You Mad as Hell Yet?

By Fred Brown, Guest Columnist

I experienced in mid-life something that I wish on no one. Because of this event, I live with a disease called chronic pain.  I am considered a “pain patient” by the medical community, but I try not to see myself as such. I am a human being, living my life to the best of my ability.

I had several surgeries to fix a problem in my spine.  These procedures not only failed to fix the problem, they left me with severe and chronic intractable pain.

There is a way to relieve my pain and make me more functional, and it has been part of my life for over two decades: Opioid pain medication prescribed by a board-certified pain management physician.

Opioids give me quality of life and let me be a spouse, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

The problem I have is that there are people in state and federal agencies, along with legislators in our government, who think they know better than my trained doctor. These officials make claims without any science to back them up. They don’t want me to take opioids or say I should only use them at very low doses that do not work.

FRED BROWN

There are millions of legitimate chronic pain patients like me who need these drugs. They are essentially being told, “Sorry, we do not want your physician to treat you the way they know best. And if you don’t do what we think is best for you, we can do nasty things to you and your doctor.”

These officials can use state and federal powers to take away your physician’s license to practice medicine. And if that is not enough, they can even put them in jail.  The government is persecuting doctors for legitimately prescribing opioids for chronic pain.

There is strong evidence -- using our own government's information -- to prove physicians have not caused the crisis. The writing of opioid prescriptions has been coming down for several years. What has been increasing are patients turning to street drugs or, even worse. committing suicide. They are not able to obtain relief the right way, so they go to the streets!

There has been so much disinformation about opioid medication that our media has distributed to the public.   Over and over, we hear that physicians have overprescribed opioids and caused the “opioid crisis.”

Over 40 years ago, there was a motion picture made called “Network.”  In the movie, there is a fantastic scene where an anchorman named Howard Beale becomes so frustrated and angry during a show that he shouts over and over, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Then he encourages Americans across the country to open their windows and do the same. Millions do.

To my fellow patients, advocates, friends, doctors and other healthcare workers. It is time to write, call and communicate with your Senator and Congressmen.

Like Howard Beale, tell them you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore.   

Fred Brown lives with degenerative disc disease, bone spurs, stenosis and other spinal problems. He is a patient advocate and volunteer with The Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain (ATIP). 

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org. 

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Empathy Must Be Included in Pain Management Education

By Dr. Lynn Webster, PNN Columnist

The National Institutes for Health (NIH) is seeking input on how to improve medical education in the fields of pain management and the treatment of opioid use disorder.

Although the NIH is primarily asking healthcare professionals and researchers to weigh in, comments from the general public are also welcome. The information will be used to update the NIH’s Centers for Excellence in Pain Education, which is developing pain management curriculum for medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy schools to improve how students are taught about pain and its treatment.

If you are a person in pain, or love someone who is, your input is what all healthcare providers should hear. You can see the Request for Information (RFI) by clicking here. The link includes an email address to use to contribute your thoughts.

This is an opportunity to tell the NIH what you would like to see included in pain education, or what needs to be taught regarding opioid misuse or abuse. People often want to be heard. This is the time to let the NIH know what you believe is important to teach all healthcare providers.

Potential educational topics could include:

• What should be the primary goal of pain treatment

• The role of empathy, rather than animus, in treating people with pain

• The power of trust, rather than suspicion and disbelief, in the therapeutic relationship

• Techniques to reduce the stigma of pain, disability and opioid use disorder

Therapies of the Heart

My comments to the NIH will include some of my strongly-held beliefs, including:

Pain therapy must include compassion. A therapeutic relationship may not be considered mainstream medical treatment, but it is crucial to pain management. It includes acceptance, compassion, listening, respect, encouragement, trust, kindness, patience, and being fully present.

I call these the therapies of the heart. They are simple, yet vital, components of a broad-based approach to treating the whole person.

Too often, people in pain are abandoned by health care professionals, family members, and friends. They need to be supported by all the key people in their lives and treated by medical professionals who are adequately trained.

Education should convey that pain isn't just biological. It is psychological, social, and spiritual. A healthcare professional who treats pain must internalize this concept to provide the most humanistic treatment possible.

The fact that withdrawal does not mean addiction is a concept too few people in healthcare understand. Any education that discusses opioids must make clear the differences between addiction and withdrawal. Providers also must learn that a person who experiences withdrawal is not necessarily addicted.

I will recommend to the NIH that their program require all participants watch Travis Rieder’s TED Talk on opioid withdrawal:

I will also ask that pain management curriculum make it clear that babies cannot be born addicted. The fact that the media commonly uses the phrase "addicted babies" in place of "babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome" only reinforces the misunderstanding of what clinical withdrawal means.

Additionally, education should address misconceptions about people in pain, and how chronic pain affects families and other relationships. Educational content should include a discussion of the losses that accompany chronic pain -- to the person in pain and also to their family members.

Providers need to be trained to understand that pain is personal and individualized; therefore, treatment must be individualized, too. What works for one person may not work for another.

Lynn R. Webster, MD, is a vice president of scientific affairs for PRA Health Sciences and consults with the pharmaceutical industry. He is author of the award-winning book, “The Painful Truth” and co-producer of the documentary, “It Hurts Until You Die.”

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Federal Task Force Releases ‘Roadmap’ to Treat Pain Crisis

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

A federal advisory panel has released its final report on recommended best practices for acute and chronic pain management, calling for a balanced approach to pain treatment that focuses on individualized patient care – not rigid guidelines that triggered a pain crisis for millions of Americans.

“There is a no one-size-fits-all approach when treating and managing patients with painful conditions,” said Vanila Singh, MD, Task Force chair and chief medical officer of the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. “Individuals who live with pain are suffering and need compassionate, individualized and effective approaches to improving pain and clinical outcomes. This report is a roadmap that is desperately needed to treat our nation’s pain crisis.”

Unlike previous federal efforts that focused primarily on limiting access to opioid medication while expanding access to addiction treatment, the 116-page report by the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force took a more comprehensive approach to pain management that focused on the needs of patients, improving their quality of life, and establishing a “therapeutic alliance” between patient and clinician.   

The panel sought and received feedback from over 5,000 patients, advocates and healthcare providers on issues such as suicide, patient abandonment and the stigma associated with chronic pain. Several patient stories were incorporated into the final report.

Even longtime critics of federal pain care policies were impressed.

“This report from the HHS Pain Management Task Force is exceptional, in my view. Rarely have I seen a report that is of such high quality, with such reasonable, common-sense recommendations,” said Bob Twillman, PhD, former Executive Director of the Academy of Integrative Pain Management. “The willingness to recognize concerns expressed by people with pain and by healthcare providers is not something we have often seen, and it is refreshing to see those comments play an important role here.”

“I truly hope this is a huge step forward,” said Andrea Anderson, a pain sufferer and patient advocate. “I think there was much to be praised, such as the focus on individualized patient care, the need for multi-disciplinary treatment teams with care-coordination, a more robust focus on post-surgical pain management, an emphasis on moving complementary and integrative health approaches into the main stream of pain treatment, and the need for further education and research  on a number of important topics.”

No Repeal of CDC Guideline

The task force did not call for a repeal of the CDC’s controversial opioid prescribing guideline, but said the guideline should be clarified and updated with better evidence to supports its recommendations..

“The Task Force recognizes the utility of the 2016 CDC Guideline for many aspects of pain management and its value in mitigating adverse outcomes of opioid exposure. Unfortunately, misinterpretation, in addition to gaps in the guideline, has led to unintended adverse consequences. Our report documented widespread misinterpretation of the CDC Guideline — specifically, the recommendation regarding the 90 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) dose,” the report found.

“Educating stakeholders about the intent and optimal application of this guideline and re-emphasis of its core beneficial aspects are essential. Instances have been reported where the CDC Guideline was misapplied to the palliative care and cancer populations with pain and to providers who care for these patient populations.”

The task force called for a more “even-handed approach” to opioid prescriptions that allows doctors to use their own clinical judgement on how to treat patients.

“Various health insurance plans, retail pharmacies, and local and state governments are implementing the CDC Guideline as policy, limiting the number of days a patient can receive prescription opioids even when the seriousness of the injury or surgery may require opioids for adequate pain management for a longer period. A more even-handed approach would balance addressing opioid overuse with the need to protect the patient-provider relationship by preserving access to medically necessary drug regimens and reducing the potential for unintended consequences,” the task force said.

That kind of thinking is heresy to anti-opioid crusaders and politicians who consider the CDC guideline a cornerstone of the government’s war on drugs. Even before the task force report was finalized, 39 state and territory attorney generals wrote a letter of protest.   

“As a matter of public safety, there is simply no justification to move away from the CDC Guideline to encourage more liberal use of an ineffective treatment that causes nearly 50,000 deaths annually,” the letter warns. “It is incomprehensible that officials would consider moving away from key components of the CDC Guideline.”

Critics have also claimed that some task force members have a conflict-of-interest because of their financial ties to pharmaceutical companies. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden (D) — who has received millions of dollars in campaign donations from healthcare companies and insurers — recently told Mother Jones that the task force was “being used as part of the industry’s broader effort to water down the CDC’s recommendations on opioid prescribing.”

The 29 members who served on the task force included representatives from the FDA, CDC, VA and Office of National Drug Control Policy; as well as academic and medical experts in pain management, addiction treatment, pharmacy, oncology, psychiatry and interventional medicine. There was only one patient advocate, Cindy Steinberg of the U.S. Pain Foundation.

Interestingly, Harold Tu, MD, the lone dentist on the panel, is the father-in-law of Andrew Kolodny, MD, the founder and Executive Director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP), an anti-opioid activist group that played a key role in drafting the CDC guideline. Tu voted in favor of the task force’s final report.

The report’s recommendations are voluntary and not binding on the Department of Health and Human Services or anyone else. The task force was created in 2016 by the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to “determine whether there are gaps in or inconsistencies between best practices for pain management.”

Those gaps have been identified. Whether anyone will get to work and fill them is unclear.

“I think the task force provided a very good analysis of the problem with recommendations that if implemented should help millions of Americans with pain and reduce the problem with opioids,” says Lynn Webster, MD, past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine and a PNN columnist.

“My concern is that there doesn't appear to be any teeth to the recommendations. I would like to have seen some specifics but that may have been too much to expect at this stage.”

Fibromyalgia Stole My Life, Kratom Gave It Back

By Mary Ann Dunkel, Guest Columnist

Fibromyalgia stole my life more than 28 years ago. I have severe chronic pain and fatigue that limits my activities of daily living. Unless you have experienced unrelenting severe pain 24 hours a day, you cannot know the horror of it.

I have been prescribed more pharmaceuticals than I can remember and suffered damaging side effects from them. I've participated in psychotherapy, aqua therapy, multiple pain management programs, acupuncture and hypnosis. None of these modalities brought me relief and for quite some time I was bedridden and dependent on family for care.

My doctors have prescribed me morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, tramadol and other medications to control the pain. None of them worked for very long and I could see these prescriptions were going to lead to addiction. Often, I weaned myself off them and suffered through terrible withdrawal because the small amount of relief they gave was not worth the risk of addiction or overdose death. Bottom line is these narcotics were not effective in treating my chronic pain.

There were times when I thought about taking my life because I just couldn't get a break from the pain and didn't think I could take it any longer.

Then a friend introduced me to kratom. She had been consuming it for more than 10 years without side effects or becoming addicted to it. I started my own journey consuming kratom.

Kratom is not a drug. It is a dietary supplement. It does not heal any disease, but it has certainly improved my quality of life. I am having pain free days and my energy level is greatly improved. Kratom has restored my ability to have a normal life and I can enjoy all sorts of activities that make my life rich and full.

Kratom does not make me high, nor do I experience side effects. I am now clear minded without the sedation caused by narcotics. And I am devastated that the FDA is working to ban the only thing that has helped me in the past 28 years.

MARY ANN DUNKEL

I am sick to death of reporters parroting the lies from the FDA and CDC. I implore you. The studies they have done are full of inaccuracies and half-truths. Independent studies of the autopsies in the so called kratom deaths have shown the victims had multiple medications in their systems. They also included a death caused by gunshot.

Eight leading scientists have studied kratom and found it to be safe. It has been used for hundreds of years without problem. It is not an opioid; it is related to the coffee plant. It does attach to the same receptors in the brain as opioids, but so do many other substances such as chocolate and milk.

I would suggest to you that the FDA wants it banned because it is cutting into Big Pharma's financial bottom line. People are finding the help they need without costly and deadly pharmaceuticals. I fear that if kratom is banned this country will see an epidemic of self-inflicted deaths by people who have no hope. Kratom would become a black market substance due to overreach by the government to protect the monies they get from pharmaceutical lobbies.

Please investigate these facts and do the right thing. Do a story on the positives of kratom.

Do you have a story you want to share on PNN? Send it to: editor@painnewsnetwork.org.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

39 Attorneys General Practicing Medicine Without a License

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Over 5,000 healthcare providers, patients, caretakers and advocacy organizations have left comments in the Federal Register on a draft report by a federal advisory panel known as the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force. The comment period ended April 1.

Most of the comments – which you can see by clicking here – are supportive of the report, which recommends that pain management be balanced, multimodal and focused on individualized patient care. Opioid pain medication should be prescribed cautiously, if prescribed at all, according to the task force.

Those may sound like reasonable and prudent goals, but one aspect of the draft report has stirred controversy and it’s a familiar one: the CDC’s 2016 opioid prescribing guideline.

While commending its “useful general guidance,” the report found that that guideline has had many unintended consequences, including forced opioid tapering, patient abandonment and suicide. The task force said the guideline was never meant to be mandatory or to be used as a model by states, insurers and pharmacies, and better evidence was needed to support its recommendations.

The task force stopped short of recommending a wholesale revision of the guideline, but suggested a “more even-handed approach” to pain care was needed.  

“In essence, clinicians should be able to use their clinical judgement to determine opioid duration for their patients,” the report concludes.

Those were fighting words to some anti-opioid crusaders and politicians who consider the CDC guideline a cornerstone of the government’s war on drugs.

“As a matter of public safety, there is simply no justification to move away from the CDC Guideline to encourage more liberal use of an ineffective treatment that causes nearly 50,000 deaths annually,” warns a letter signed by 39 state and territory attorney generals.  “It is incomprehensible that officials would consider moving away from key components of the CDC Guideline.”

‘They Have Overreached’

The AG’s letter shows a fundamental and perhaps willful ignorance of what the guideline is – a voluntary set of recommendations intended only for primary care physicians. The letter also demonstrates how politicians have grown accustomed to inserting themselves into pain management decisions normally left between patients and their doctors. In essence, the AG’s are saying that doctors should not be allowed to use their own clinical judgement and should rely instead on treatment guidelines.  

“The Draft Report proposes to rely solely on the judgment of providers regarding the dose and duration of opioid treatment. With annual overdose deaths in the tens of thousands, evidence-based recommendations, such as documentation and consultation, are necessary,” the AG letter states. “Similarly, the Draft Report states that duration of opioid treatment for acute pain, including trauma and surgery, is best determined by providers without the need for guidelines to inform appropriate decision-making.”

Critics say the AG’s are essentially practicing medicine without a license.

“The foxes watching the hen house want more hens to watch, more justification for their existence,” says Mark Ibsen, MD, a Montana doctor all too familiar with government intrusion into pain care. Ibsen’s medical license was suspended in 2016 over allegations that he overprescribed opioids, a decision later reversed by a judge.

“They have overreached. I hope someone else notices, and takes law enforcement out of the practice of medicine, where they’ve been screwing up medical care since 1914. Abolish the DEA. Let law enforcement catch criminals, not make them up out of thin air,” Ibsen said.

This isn’t the first time the National Association of Attorneys General has tried to meddle in pain care. In 2017, the organization sent a letter to health insurers asking them to take steps to reduce the prescribing of opioid medication.

“Reducing the frequency with which opioids are prescribed will not leave patients without effective pain management options.”

— National Assn. of Attorneys General

“Reducing the frequency with which opioids are prescribed will not leave patients without effective pain management options,” the 2017 letter states. “When patients seek treatment for any of the myriad conditions that cause chronic pain, doctors should be encouraged to explore and prescribe effective non-opioid alternatives, ranging from non-opioid medications (such as NSAIDs) to physical therapy, acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic care.”

In their latest letter, it’s no longer a matter of “should.” The AG’s say doctors “must be encouraged” to reduce opioid prescriptions and to recognize that opioids have “well established risks.”  

“The Draft Report should be revised to clearly state that there is no completely safe opioid dose, and that higher doses are particularly – and predictably – risky,” the AG’s wrote.

But most opioid medications are not particularly risky, as PNN reported in a recent study of over half a million Medicare patients who were prescribed the drugs. Over 90 percent had a negligible risk of an overdose. Even among “high risk” patients on high opioid doses, the risk of an overdose is less than two percent.

‘Too Much Money On the Line’

Critics also point out the AG’s have a political and financial interest in demonizing opioid medication. Most have signed on as plaintiffs in over 1,600 class action lawsuits filed by states, cities and counties seeking billions of dollars in damages from opioid manufacturers and distributors. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter – one of the AG’s who signed the letter criticizing the task force report --  recently reached an out-of-court settlement with Purdue Pharma for $270 million.  

“There is just too much potential money on the line. This is not an argument about truth, or evidence, or anything except money," says Andrea Anderson, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain (ATIP).  

“Since the Purdue/Oklahoma settlement of $270 million, all the AG’s of every state involved in this opioid litigation will focus solely on their potential financial gains until they get their piece of settlement pie. This will come at the cost of needed revisions to the flawed CDC Guidelines and a return to clinical common sense. People can remember these AG’s when they vote.” 

According to OpenSecrets.org, the law firm of Simmons Hanly Conroy donated over $1 million to congressional candidates during the 2018 election cycle. Simmons Hanly Conroy represents dozens of states and local governments that are suing drug makers over their marketing of opioids, and would pocket one-third of the proceeds from any settlements, according to reports.

A recent PNN survey found the CDC guideline was having a harmful effect on both patients and healthcare providers. Over 85 percent of patients say the guideline has made their pain and quality of life worse. Nearly half have considered suicide. Over two-thirds of practitioners are worried about being sanctioned or prosecuted for prescribing opioids. Rather than risk going to prison, many have stopped treating pain, closed their practice or retired.