CDC opioid Rx guidelines biased

[pmbug]

... the consequences of opioid prescribing guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in 2016. Those consequences include sharp reductions in medication, undertreatment of pain, reduced access to care, and outright abandonment of patients, resulting in needless suffering and sometimes suicide.

The horrifying fallout from the CDC's 2016 recommendations, which inspired laws, regulations, policies, and practices aimed at reducing the medical use of opioids, was obvious to patients, pain experts, and the American Medical Association. It attracted attention from the Food and Drug Administration and ultimately prompted the CDC to issue new, supposedly improved guidelines in 2022.

The revised version implicitly acknowledges the damage done by what the CDC describes as "misapplication" of its advice. But the agency's updated recommendations retain a bias against treating pain with opioids and a preoccupation with arbitrary dose limits. They do little to address doctors' fears of regulatory or criminal sanctions, and they do nothing to reverse the misguided rules that legislators, regulators, insurers, pharmacists, and health care organizations adopted in response to the 2016 guidelines.
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Six U.S. medical organizations have urged an end to "political interference in the delivery of evidence based medicine." These organizations represent more than 500,000 frontline clinicians and medical students spanning family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, osteopathic medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry. Additional specialties are represented in the American Medical Association's Substance Use and Pain Care Task Force, which aims to "promote evidence-based policy to end the epidemic of deaths related to drug overdose."
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Several states, including New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Minnesota, have already enacted reforms aimed at protecting clinicians from inappropriate sanctions. These laws are designed to prevent medical boards and law enforcement agencies from penalizing or prosecuting clinicians for "appropriately" prescribing opioids within a "current standard of care." No one should look to the CDC for that standard.

We need new laws to protect people in pain

The CDC’s revised prescribing guidelines retain an anti-opioid bias and do nothing to reverse the harmful policies inspired by the 2016 version.

reason.com

Bold emphasis above is mine. Thought you folks might enjoy that.

 

[Ensoniq]

In a related story

the surfs are harming the climate and can get buy with a little less anesthesia during surgeries

fiefs are fine though

Less Anesthesia in Surgeries Could Reduce the Carbon Footprint of Hospitals, Experts Suggest

Doctors at Henry Ford Health System said that gasses used in anesthesia are harmful to the environment, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is crucial. Read the article to learn more details.

www.sciencetimes.com