Should opioids be prescribed for all types of pain?

Opioids can be very helpful for acute pain management in the short term, but there are some side effects that make prolonged use risky. Watch pain management expert Devi Nampiaparampil, MD, discuss what types of pain opioid medications are best for.

Transcript

00:00

The thing that we think about with pain, the best type of treatment is obviously to figure out what the cause of the pain is and treat that. Now that's not always possible, so we

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try to use different things to kind of bridge that gap. And one of them is prescription opioids. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:20

Now we have to be very careful because prescription opioids can be very helpful for people, but they also do have a lot of side effects that have to be considered.

00:27

So I usually look at things in terms of four different problems. First of all, are prescription opioids actually helping

00:33

with the pain? So the patient will tell me that. The second thing is, is it helping them to function? So for example, while they're on these opioids,

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are they able to do the physical therapy that might help them? Are they able to go to work? Are they able to function? So that's something that's very important.

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And it might be just that the side effects of the opioids prevent them from doing those things. Then the other thing I think about are what are the side effects, you know?

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For example, are they too constipated? Are they too tired? And finally, I think about whether there's any signs of any kind of abuse.

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Are they taking more than what they're prescribed? Are there any other kinds of issues? So we usually look at opioids in general that way.

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In terms of specific types of pain, you know, I usually think of acute pain. So this is sort of like if someone just gave birth

01:15

to a child, you know, that's an acute pain that's going to get better. If someone just had major surgery, that's also an acute pain because it's

01:21

going to get better over time. But if someone has chronic pain, we really have to be more sensitive to the other side effects

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and how it affects people's function. So I kind of separate things out into those two forms. [AUDIO LOGO]