Drug overdose is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States and most of these deaths involve an opioid.
Researchers find that electrotherapy and acupuncture might reduce and delay opioid consumption, but do little to control pain.
New research by economists in the United States and Iceland has put a price tag on what it’s worth to Americans to live without chronic pain. The researchers, using a massive government survey of Americans over age 50, estimated in a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that living with chronic pain makes people so unhappy that they’d need to earn between $20,000 and $50,000 per year more to be as happy as they would be otherwise with no pain.
Potential total knee patients are likely to be very worried about opioids, and less likely to postpone surgery if they can be convinced their pain will be managed with strategies that de-emphasize or eliminate them. Those are among the key takeaways from a recent survey supported by SPR Therapeutics, which markets implants designed to provide opioid-free peripheral nerve stimulation, and published in Reconstructive Review, the journal of the Joint Implant Surgery & Research Foundation.
More than two-thirds of patients reported unused prescription opioids following surgery, and safe storage and disposal rarely occurred, according to a study published by JAMA Surgery that strongly suggests that overprescribing after surgery is fueling the nation's opioid addiction and abuse crises.