Goodbye to Compounded Analgesic Creams

This study is one of the largest and best-designed study I ' m aware of of these creams, and the findings are pretty clear: such creams benefit patients via placebo mechanisms, aka they don ' t work.Note that there is a separate body of research on some other topicals which should not be confused with this study. Eg, the 5% lidocaine patch for post-herpetic neuralgia, topical capsaicin for a variety of neuropathies, and at least some topical NSAIDs for osteoarthritis, and topical opioids. I ' m not broadly endorsing those either - it ' s complicated - however they weren ' t tested here and the take home point is we should stop making our patients pay exorbitant out of pocket costs for these compounded analgesic placebos, not necessarily those others.Particularly for painful axonal neuropathies, many of us struggle with how to control those adequately, especially chemotherapy induced ones which don ' t respond well to most systemic drugs, and I ' ve ordered plenty of fancy creams in the past for my patients, most of whom paid out of pocket for them, and I think it ' s time to stop doing that.For morePallimed posts about journal reviews.For morePallimed posts by Drew click here.Drew Rosielle, MD is a palliative care physician at the University of Minnesota Health in Minnesota. He founded Pallimed in 2005. You can occasionally find him onTwitter at @drosielle.References1 Brutcher RE, Kurihara C, Bicket MC, Moussavian-Yousefi P, Reece DE, Solomon LM, et al. "Compounded Topical Pa...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Source Type: blogs