Monthly Archives: February 2019

Could Switching Opioids in Cancer Patients Provide Relief? – Lori Smith, BSN, MSN, CRNP – Nov 12, 2018

I’m disappointed to see this limited only to cancer patients. Since we know that there’s NO DIFFERENCE between cancer and non-cancer pain, these findings would also apply to other kinds of chronic pain.

Side effects and inadequate pain relief with the use of opioids in cancer patients is a challenge for healthcare providers to manage and can cause considerable problems for these patients.

While the topic is still debated within the medical community, opioid switching in cancer patients may provide relief of pain and alleviation of opioid-related side effects, according to the results of a recent Italian study.  

Limiting opioid prescriptions will do little to reduce overdose deaths, study says – by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff  February 01, 2019

This article is about a very important, and for us very encouraging, new JAMA study that just came out showing that prescription limits barely reduce overdoses. We pain patients have known this all along, but when it’s officially researched and published it will be taken more seriously.

The anti-opioid zealots will try to explain away its findings, but it will be a piece of hard evidence that saner minds can use to push back against these ridiculously ineffective prescription opioid limits.

When the death toll from opioid overdoses began to soar a few years ago… Policy makers naturally sought to put a lid on opioid prescribing.

But a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open finds that reducing opioid prescriptions will have little effect on the death rate…