SmartBottle Opioid Administration Device: Interview with Leila Smith of Ethimedix
Ethimedix, a Swiss medical device company, has developed the SmartBottle, a drug administration device for analgesics. The device is a programmable “lockbox” which allows for the controlled administration of single doses of opioid painkillers, reducing the potential for addiction and abuse.
In view of the current opioid crisis, controlling access to prescription analgesics is important. The FDA has launched an Innovation Challenge to incentivize companies to develop medical devices that can combat the opioid crisis. Ethimedix have recently submitted their SmartBottle for consideration in the challenge.
The SmartBottle ...
Source: Medgadget - November 6, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Geriatrics Medicine Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Stop stigmatizing medication-assisted treatment
Imagine yourself as a patient burdened with a chronic disease that necessitated daily medication adherence to function. Now imagine that medication has become so stigmatized by society that you feel judged and ashamed every time that you use it. That’s the world that individuals with opioid use disorder are forced to live in when they’re prescribed methadone or buprenorphine to get through the day. Without these medications, patients have over an 80 percent chance of relapsing to drug use, yet society proclaims that it’s just “substituting one drug for another”. This dangerous outlook is inappropriately shaping t...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 12, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/brandon-jacobi" rel="tag" > Brandon Jacobi < /a > Tags: Meds Medications Pain Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Illusions as Painkillers: the Analgesic Value of Resizing Illusions in Knee Osteoarthritis - Scientific American
Research has shown that the experience of pain is highly subjective: people feel more or less pain, in identical physical situations, as a function of their mood and attention. This flexibility showcases the potential for cognitive manipulations to decrease the pain associated with a variety of pathologies. As an example, the virtual-reality game"Snow World" (in which game in which players shoot snowballs to defeat snowman Frosty and his penguins) reportedly works better than morphine at counteracting the pain of patients in burn units. Other studies have indicated that virtual reality manipulations of the patien...
Source: Psychology of Pain - September 21, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
International Palliative Care Education - EPEC-Peds
By Stacy S. Remke (@StacyRemke)In about 2004, our program embarked on a regional pilot project to teach healthcare workers – doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, and others – to provide pediatric palliative care. Our region is the Upper Midwest: Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota. “Join pediatric palliative care,” we joked, “and see the world!!”Little did we know.From these first steps began a truly humbling and inspiring journey across many continents and into many communities.Much of this started when a project I was involved with –Education in Palliative and End of Life Care for Pedi...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - September 21, 2018 Category: Palliative Care Tags: international pediatrics remke Source Type: blogs
Too Good to Be True? A Nonaddictive Opioid without Lethal Side Effects Shows Promise - Scientific American
With nearly 50,000 drug overdose deaths from opioids last year and an estimated two million Americans addicted, the opioid crisis continues to rage throughout the U.S. This statistic must be contrasted with another: 25 million Americans live with daily chronic pain, for which few treatment options are available apart from opioid medications.Opioid drugs like morphine and Oxycontin are still held as the gold standard when it comes to relieving pain. But it has become brutally obvious that opioids have dangerous side effects, including physical dependence, addiction and the impaired breathing that too often leads to death fr...
Source: Psychology of Pain - September 19, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Mandated Queries of the Florida Prescription Drug Monitoring Program: Early Experiences from a Cancer Center-based Outpatient Palliative Medicine Clinic
This article describes our e xperiences in the first month of experience with the new law, although we plan to examine queries for a total of three months before closing this QI project.For the purpose of this QI project, we have documented patients ’ demographics, including each patient’s age, gender and limited identifying information, such as patient names and identification numbers; this data will be de-identified for any statistical analysis planned in the future. We also recorded patients’ main diagnosis and pain symptoms, the numbe r of prescribers listed by the PDMP as well as the dose of the patient’s opio...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - September 14, 2018 Category: Palliative Care Tags: kollas opioids pdmp quality improvement The profession Source Type: blogs
A Tale of 2 Occlusions in the Same Patient: one with Expert ECG interpretation, the Other Without
Submitted by Nic Thompson, Written by Pendell Meyers, edits by Steve SmithThis is a long post, but well worth the read because it clearly delineates the difference in patient outcomes between advanced ECG interpretation and STEMI criteria!Dr. Thompson evaluated a male in his 40s with history of CAD s/p MI with PCI years ago, active smoking, HLD, HTN, who presented with chest discomfort and diaphoresis starting when the patient woke up a few hours prior to arrival. The pain waxed and waned until EMS arrived and gave him 325 mg aspirin en route, and had significant relief just prior to arrival. Here was his presentation...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - September 2, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
Constipated Society
Our ancestors who lived without grains, sugars, and soft drinks enjoy predictable bowel behavior. They ate some turtle, fish, clams, mushrooms, coconut, or mongongo nuts for breakfast, and out it all came that afternoon or evening—large, steamy, filled with undigested remains and prolific quantities of bacteria, no straining, laxatives, or stack of magazines required. If instead you are living a modern life and have pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast and you’ll be lucky to pass that out by tomorrow or the next day. Or perhaps you will be constipated, not passing out your pancakes and syrup for days, passing it inc...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - August 30, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates bloating bowel flora bran constipation Dr. Davis fiber grain-free grains hydrate Inflammation laxatives Opiate drugs Opiods prebiotic undoctored wheat belly Wheat Belly Total Health Source Type: blogs
Constipation Nation
Our ancestors who lived without grains, sugars, and soft drinks enjoyed predictable bowel behavior. They ate some turtle, fish, clams, mushrooms, coconut, or mongongo nuts for breakfast, and out it all came that afternoon or evening—large, steamy, filled with undigested remains and prolific quantities of bacteria, no straining, laxatives, or stack of magazines required. If instead you are living a modern life and have pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast, you’ll be lucky to pass that out by tomorrow or the next day. Or perhaps you will be constipated, not passing out your pancakes and syrup for days, passing it inco...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - August 30, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates bloating bowel flora bran constipation Dr. Davis fiber grain-free grains hydrate Inflammation laxatives Opiate drugs Opiods prebiotic undoctored wheat belly Wheat Belly Total Health 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
" Unstable Angina still exists " , even in the Age of High Sensitivity Troponin
This case comes from a long term blog reader from Norway.Case: 49 y.o male. No previous medical hx. 15-20 pack year smoking history. Parent with ACS in their 60 ' s. No DM. No HTN, no dyslipidemia, normal weight. Brought to the emergency department due to chest pain. Patient stated that 20 hrs before presentation he experienced numbness of the left hand, 1-2 hours after which he developed retrosternal chest pain ongoing from 02:00 lasting until 08:00 with no pain free period. Went to bed at 08:00. Awoke 11:00 pain free. The day of presentation, the chest pain started again whil...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - August 16, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Grains are creating havoc in our brains. IT ’ S NOT YOUR IMAGINATION!
Something’s just not right: lately you are forgetful, stressed, and tired all of the time. Symptoms can vary from mood swings, to lack of concentration, to feeling chronically tired, and anxious. To top it off, no matter how healthy you try to eat, you still aren’t losing weight. So let’s add frustrated to the list. And you’re finding that all of this is affecting your performance at work, as a parent, and even as a partner/spouse. It’s not your imagination.
Grains are behind it all…
The grains you consume may have numerous damaging effects on your brain and nervous system, not just your gastr...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - August 9, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates adhd anxiety appetite control blood sugar brain brain fog Brain function dementia Dr. Davis grain grains Inflammation learning ability libido mood mood swings psychiatric disorders seizures Source Type: blogs
There Is More Than One Way to “Spin” a Stat
This study demonstrated that opioid overdose after surgical discharge was rare. Patients were at risk of experiencing an overdose after leaving the hospital, especially in the first month. Furthermore, patients using high quantities of opioids preoperatively were at a heightened risk compared with those not receiving high-dose opioid therapy prior to the operation. ”The big takeaway from this study is that overdose rates in patients discharged on opioids postoperatively are extremely low —even in those who had been chronically receiving high-dose opioids preoperatively. But the authors of the study spent most of the ti...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 8, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
More bad news for morphine in acute decompensated heart failure
(Source: Notes from Dr. RW)
Source: Notes from Dr. RW - August 3, 2018 Category: Internal Medicine Tags: cardiovascular hospital medicine pharmacology Source Type: blogs
