Opioid Painkillers

Draft revisions no longer include specific dosage ceilings. This and other changes address controversial elements of the older guidance and highlight clinicians’ roles in opioid prescribing decisions.

Most American adults use alternatives to opioid drugs such as complementary medicine to manage their pain, but psychological therapies are infrequently implemented, researchers say.

Even the best, multimodal treatment strategies may be only 30% effective, say the authors of a new review and pain management guide.

Patients given a non-opioid pain regimen after knee surgery had pain scores equal to their peers who received opioids, and no difference in side effects, according to a study by orthopedic surgeons.

Substantial regional variations exist for fracture-associated drug prescriptions — and hip fracture rates — in long-term care facility residents, researchers say.

Clinicians should be aware of preoperative opioid exposure levels to ensure older patients’ safe recovery, and to help determine the dosage of post-surgical painkillers, researchers say.

A high-dose painkiller prescription often accompanies hospital patients upon discharge to a skilled nursing facility. The result is a complex medication management challenge for care providers, investigators...

Tramadol users are more likely to experience hip fracture than their peers who take codeine or common NSAIDs, an analysis finds.

People who first visit a physical therapist for low back pain are much less likely to be prescribed opioids than those who first visit a primary care doctor.

Painkillers are frequently prescribed to manage chronic pain that disrupts sleep. But research on the use of opioid drugs for aiding sleep is limited and existing studies rarely consider side effects.