Frustrated Patients and Fearful Physicians

Excerpt

We appreciate Drs. Ruan and Luo’s response to our editorial, and agree with their observation that clinical attitudes about using opioids to treat pain have fluctuated in part due to changes in society’s perceptions about pain and opioid medications.1 The use of opioids to treat chronic pain in the 1990s was itself a major departure from prior clinical practice, as indicated by the passage of state laws that explicitly shielded physicians from prosecution for using controlled substances to treat intractable pain. As a result of this shift, during our own training in the mid-2000s, we were taught to use long-acting opioids, including methadone, as first-line agents for chronic pain. …