The "wonder drug" pain medications of the
mid-1990s have turned out to be a major problem – and a big disappointment. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said not
only do they run a high risk of addicting the user, but they can actually make
patients' chronic pain worse.
Public awareness of the opioid crisis has grown in the past
few weeks, after the sudden death of pop star Prince, who died in April after
reportedly seeking treatment for painkiller addiction, as well as with recent
legislation passed by the U.S. House on opioid abuse.
“More than 40 Americans die each day from prescription
opioid overdoses,” Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, said in a statement earlier
this month. “Overprescribing opioids -- largely for chronic pain -- is a key
driver of America’s drug-overdose epidemic." A single opioid overdose can also kill, because it can
result in respiratory distress. The number of those deaths has been rising to a
high of 29,000 in 2014 -- the latest year for which the figures are available.
Of that number, 18,893 deaths were from prescription
painkillers. The other 10,574 were from heroin, the opioid of choice when
painkillers get too expensive or to difficult to obtain.
In a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in April,
Frieden and fellow researcher Debra Houry were blunt: "We know of no other
medication routinely used for a nonfatal condition that kills patients so
frequently.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Please insert your comments here