Toward a Healthy Relationship with Opioids
In the June 14thWall Street Journal, Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder, in an excellent essay, shared with readers his battle with pain resulting from a devastating accident, the effectiveness of opioids in controlling the pain, and the hell he went through when he was too rapidly tapered off of the opioids to which he had become physically dependent. Like most patients requiring long term pain management with opioids, he developed a physical dependence, which is often mistakenly equated with addiction by policymakers and many in the media. The aggressive schedule launched me into withdrawal, and I l...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 17, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
What are the Different Drugs Used for Heroin and Opioid Detox?
Understanding Heroin and Opioid Detox
When someone is struggling with addiction to heroin or opioids, it can be almost impossible to quit cold turkey. This is due to unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, as well as intense drug cravings. When someone quits cold turkey, they will have to experience all these debilitating withdrawal symptoms and manage strong cravings on their own. This is extremely hard to do without the assistance of medication during heroin and opioid detox.
According to Medline, about 948,000 people used heroin during the past year. In the same year, about 11.5 million people were nonmedical users of narcotic ...
Source: Cliffside Malibu - May 7, 2019 Category: Addiction Authors: Jaclyn Uloth Tags: Addiction Addiction Recovery Addiction Treatment and Program Resources Detox Resources for Alcohol and Drugs/Opiates Painkiller Substance Abuse drug detox heroin heroin addiction heroin users luxury heroin rehab medical medical det Source Type: blogs
Overprescribing Is a Key Component of the Opioid Crisis — Here’s How to Stop It
By DAVE CHASE
Today’s opioid crisis is one of the most dire side effects driven by our dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system. A recent JAMA Surgery report found that many surgeons prescribe four times more opioids than their patients use. This opens the door for misuse and abuse later on. In fact, the total combined cost of misuse, abuse, dependence and overdose is about $78.5 billion.
Unfortunately, there’s a direct connection between the low-quality care many patients receive, and the astounding rates of opioid addiction. Often, insurance plans offer access to high-cost, volume-centric physicians and include high de...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 29, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Patients Value-Based Care Dave Chase Opioid epidemic Source Type: blogs
More Than Just Dander
First, a sort of meta-comment in the form of a shout-out to HCRenewal ' s intrepid editor, Dr. Roy Poses, for his just-published analysis of what we might call " blogging: rise and fall. " He sees decline reflected in publications long devoted to health and health policy, yet now flaking off.Methinks, however, despite the usefulness of his overview of recent decades, Dr. P need not fret excessively. Water spilling out of the barrel ' s lip will slow down once folks come along and punch a whole bunch of little mid-section tweet-holes in it. Information still flows. (Sort of.) In any case, surely there ' s overla...
Source: Health Care Renewal - January 25, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
The Mysteries Surrounding Rhodes Pharmaceuticals, the Sackler Family's Second Opioid Company
Mysteries still abound in the not so wonderful world of health care dysfunction, so, quick, the game ' s afoot...Today ' s mysteries involve beneficial ownership. Beneficial ownership questions are important to anti-corruption campaigners. Beneficial ownership simply refers to " anyone who enjoys the benefits of ownership of a security or property, without being on the record as being the owner. " (per Wikipedia). Concealing who really owns a company enables concealing sources of funds (as in money laundering), market power (when the owner also owns competitors), and sources of political influence, and en...
Source: Health Care Renewal - January 8, 2019 Category: Health Management Tags: anechoic effect concentration of power conflicts of interest dark money deception Donald Trump health care corruption marketing narcotics Purdue Pharma Source Type: blogs
Health IT Is In The Front Line To Try And Stem The Opioid Crisis in The US – Relevant Here Too!
This appeared last week:Providers turning to health IT to combat the opioid crisis By Marla Durben HirschPublished December 26 2018, 7:49am ESTProviders have begun to harness technology to improve their management of opioids and avoid misuse. It ’s not a moment too soon. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent reports, released in November, confirm that the opioid crisis is worsening. The number of drug overdose deaths in the United states in 2017 was 9.6 percent higher than in 2016. The rate of drug overdose deaths involving natural and semisynthetic opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone has rise...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - January 2, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
No Let Up On The Bad News About Overdose Deaths
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) just issued Data Brief Number 329, entitled “Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999-2017.” Drug overdose deaths reached a new record high, exceeding 70,000 deaths in 2017, a 9.6 percent increase over 2016. That figure includes all drug overdoses, including those due to cocaine, methamphetamines, and benzodiazepines. The actual breakdown according to drug category will be reported in mid-December. However, estimates are opioid-related deaths will account for roughly 49,000 of the total overdose deaths. The big takeaways, quoting the report:- The rate of ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 29, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Has Opioid Hysteria Risen to the Point Where Innovation Is Forbidden?
On November 2 the Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of Dsuvia, a sublingual tablet containing the powerful fentanyl analog, sufentanil. Sufentanil has been used for years in the hospital setting, primarily in intravenous form for anesthesia. It is roughly 5 to 10 times more potent than fentanyl, and thus has a significant overdose potential. The FDA reached this decision following a 10-3 vote in favor of the drug’s approval by the Anesthetic and Analgesia Drug Products Advisory Committee (AADPAC),based on data from multicenter trials. It was not approved for outpatient use, but for use only in ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 6, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Telemedicine should be easy. Here ’s why it’s not.
Who was Ryan Haight?
Ryan Haight was an 18-year-old honor student from La Mesa, California who died on February 12, 2001, from an overdose of hydrocodone ordered from an online doctor he never saw — and shipped to his home from a rogue online pharmacy during the beginning of the opioid epidemic.
The pharmacist, Clayton Fuchs, filled the online prescription and thousands more like it along with four doctors who authorized the prescriptions. All five were charged in 2002 and subsequently either pleaded guilty or were convicted several months later. The four doctors involved in the conspiracy were paid between $40 to $100 d...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 12, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/dennis-wichern" rel="tag" > Dennis Wichern < /a > Tags: Meds Medications Pain Management Source Type: blogs
The Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again
Late last week UPI news ran a report by E.J. Mundell with the headline, “Government efforts to curb opioid prescriptions might have backfired.” It cites two separate studies published online in JAMA Surgery on August 22 that examined two different restrictive opioid policies that fell victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences.The first study, by researchers at the University of Michigan, evaluated the impact of the Drug Enforcement Administration ’s 2014 rescheduling of hydrocodone (Vicodin) from Schedule III to Schedule II. Prescriptions for Schedule III narcotics may be phoned or faxed in by providers, but ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 26, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Death Notification as Behavior Modification: Let's think this through
by Ben Skoch (@skochb)Opioid Problem. Opioid Epidemic. Opioid Crisis.Call it what you will (as long as you don ’t use the word narcotic, butthat ’s another article), but the United States has a real issue with opioids right now. It has been much talked about, publicized, criticized, politicized, has left some people ostracized, to a point where the concern has become supersized. Six years ago,a reportstated enough opioid prescriptions were written for every adult in the US to have a bottle of pills, about 259 million. Couple that with thereport from the CDC that over 42,000 people died from opioid (illicit and prescrib...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - August 24, 2018 Category: Palliative Care Tags: behavior change burnout california journal article opioids research skoch The profession Source Type: blogs
Politics, Confirmation Bias, and Opioids
This post co-authored with Rafael Fonseca, MD, Chairman of the Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, AZMuch has been written about how politics and ideology influence research funding, suppress research in certain areas, and lead to the cherry-picking and misrepresentation of evidence in support of a narrative or agenda. Science journalist John Tierney explored “The Real War on Science” in an excellent essay in City Journal in 2016. Reflecting on this phenomenon in 2011,Patrick J. Michaels stated:The process is synergistic and self-fulfilling. Periodicals like Science are what academia uses to define the...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 7, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Depression: Common medication side effect?
This study is especially thought-provoking, given that more and more people are taking medications with depression or suicidal thoughts as possible side effects. The CDC just released updated data showing a troubling recent rise in suicide rates, and that 54% of those who die from suicide do not have a known mental health disorder, so this is an important public health issue.
That said, it is important to note: in this study, people who used these medications were more likely to be widowed and have chronic health problems, both of which are associated with a higher risk of depression. And many (but not all) of these medica...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 16, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Monique Tello, MD, MPH Tags: Anxiety and Depression Drugs and Supplements Health Source Type: blogs
FDA Commissioner Gottlieb ’s Sunday “Tweetorial” Is Both Encouraging and Frustrating
A fair reading of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb ’s “Sunday Tweetorial” on the opioid overdose crisis leaves one simultaneously encouraged and frustrated. First the encouraging news. The Commissioner admits that the so-called epidemic of opioid overdoses has “evolved” from one “mostly involving [diverted] prescription drugs to one that’s increasingly fueled by illicit substances being purchased online or off the street.” Most encouraging was this passage: Even as lawful prescribing of opioids is declining, we ’re seeing large increases in deaths from accidental drug overdoses...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 2, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Might Depression Be Linked to One of These Popular Medications?
If you’re taking beta blockers, certain kinds of anxiety drugs, certain types of painkillers (including ibuprofen), proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) (used to treat acid reflux), ACE inhibitors (used to treat high blood pressure), or anti-convulsant drugs, you may be at greater risk for depression. That’s according to a new, large-scale study published earlier this week in JAMA.
However, this was a correlational study, so it can’t say that these medications actually cause depression or not. It may be that people with greater health problems are more likely to take one of these medications and be depressed abo...
Source: World of Psychology - June 15, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: John M. Grohol, Psy.D. Tags: Depression General Medications Psychiatry Research Drugs cause depression popular medications Source Type: blogs
