Opiods For Chronic Pain - Where's The Evidence?
A new white paper finds little to no evidence for the effectiveness of opioid drugs in the treatment of long-term chronic pain, despite the explosive recent growth in the use of such drugs. The paper, which constitutes the final report of a seven-member panel convened by the National Institutes of Health last September, finds that many of the studies used to justify the prescription of these drugs were either poorly conducted or of an insufficient duration. That makes prolific use of these drugs surprising, says Dr. David Steffens, chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Connecticut and one of the authors of the study. When it comes to long-term pain, he says, "there's no research-based evidence that these medicines are helpful." read more