Opioid crisis: Could the ' pain-o-meter ' be a solution? - USA Today

Every year, millions of Americans will go to their doctors complaining of pain, and their doctors will ask them to rate their degree of discomfort on a zero-to-10 scale, or using a range of smiley-face symbols.The doctor will have to take their word for it. And then, all too often, the doctor will prescribe a powerful and addictive opioid painkiller.It's a longstanding — if imprecise and subjective — way of measuring and treating pain. And it's at least partly responsible for starting an opioid addiction crisis that killed 64,000 people last year."One of the things we heard from many physicians is that the pain-specific indicator contributed to this crisis," said White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, President Trump's top adviser on the opioid crisis."We don't think health care by emoji is good idea," she said.So the Trump administration, which has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, is backing efforts to find better ways of measuring and treating pain in the hope of developing precise treatments that would be more effective than opioids — and without the often catastrophic side effects.Next month, the National Institutes of Health will open proposals for $4 million in small business grants to develop a device or technology to objectively measure pain. That could take the form of a blood test, a device to measure pupil dilation, or software to interpret facial expressions.NIH Director Francis Collins calls it the&q...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs