A civil war over painkillers rips apart the medical community
A ‘civil war’ over painkillers rips apart the medical community
BY Bob Tedeschi, STAT January 21, 2017 at 11:19 AM EST
PALO ALTO, Calif. — For Thomas P. Yacoe, the word is “terrifying.”
Leah Hemberry describes it as “constant fear.”
For Michael Tausig Jr., the terror is “beyond description.”
All three are patients struggling with chronic pain, but what they are describing is not physical agony but a war inside the medical community that is threatening their access to painkillers — and, by extension, their work, their relationships, and their sanity.
Two years after the United States saw a record 27,000 deaths involving prescription opioid medications and heroin, doctors and regulators are sharply restricting access to drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin. But as the pendulum swings in the other direction, many patients who genuinely need drugs to manage their pain say they are being left behind.
Doctors can’t agree on how to help them.
“There’s a civil war in the pain community,” said Dr. Daniel B. Carr, president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. “One group believes the primary goal of pain treatment is curtailing opioid prescribing. The other group looks at the disability, the human suffering, the expense of chronic pain.”
Pain specialists say there is little civil about this war.
“There’s almost a McCarthyism on this, that’s silencing so many people who are simply scared,” said Dr. Sean Mackey, who oversees Stanford University’s pain management program.
“The thing is, we all want black and white. We don’t do well with nuance. And this is an incredibly nuanced issue.”
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/painkillers-controversy-doctors/
