Pain Archive

Because addiction to pain pills often starts with an operation, surgeons are shifting to non-opioid approaches for pain control.

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Many people who are struggling with opioid addiction didn't start taking the drugs at a party or at a friend's house. They were introduced to these painkilling medications by their doctor after a surgical procedure.

In the 1990s, the number of opioid prescriptions written for people undergoing surgery or experiencing pain conditions grew — and so did related problems. As a result, "we are in a current opioid epidemic, with 91 substance-related deaths each day, according to the CDC," says Dr. Elizabeth Matzkin, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

These tips on finding the right fibromyalgia doctor may help:

Here's what to expect once you're home from the hospital.

Every day, thousands of people in the United States undergo open-heart surgery. This major operation leaves them with a long chest incision — and a lengthy recovery. The time it takes to fully heal will depend on the person's age and overall health and the complexity of the operation.

The most common is coronary artery bypass grafting, which uses a blood vessel taken from another part of the body to bypass a blocked heart artery. Open-heart surgery is also done to repair or replace a faulty heart valve or to repair damaged or abnormal areas of the heart.

Doctors and patients use the 10-point pain scale to gauge the severity of pain, but there may be a better way.

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You may remember being asked to describe your level of pain on a 10-point scale, with 0 meaning no pain and 10 meaning extreme pain.

This scale was initially designed to help nurses and doctors better document and monitor how much pain you were experiencing and thereby offer the right treatment.

By the time you reach your 50th birthday, you've prob-ably also reached another milestone: you've put 75,000 miles on your feet. You may reach this milestone much earlier if you've led a foot-active lifestyle. By age 50, you may have lost nearly half of the fatty padding on the soles of your feet. And you may be wearing a shoe that's a size bigger than what you wore in your 20s, in part because of weight gain that puts greater pres-sure on your feet, and in part because your ligaments and tendons have lost some of their elasticity (which also predisposes them to potentially painful ruptures or microtears). If you've given birth, you have another reason for the increase in shoe size: hormones released during pregnancy also cause ligaments to relax.

Menopause, too, can affect foot health. Unless countered by medications or exercise, the loss of estrogen and other hormonal changes generally lead to lower bone density, resulting in osteoporosis if enough bone mass is lost. This condition can raise the risk of stress fractures (hairline breaks) in any of the bones of the foot. Unless treated appropriately, stress fractures can worsen and cause the bones to shift out of place.

You have many alternatives for treating and controlling pain.

The opioid epidemic continues to rise in America, and a 2017 report from the National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly suggests the crisis now affects more older adults.

A main reason for the growing addiction to pain medicine is the ease with which it is often prescribed, according to Dr. Robert Jamison, a professor of anesthesia and psychiatry with Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Dozens of states are cracking down on the amount of opioids doctors can prescribe.

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Overdoses of powerful painkillers called opioids kill more than 115 people per day in the United States. More than 42,000 people died from opioids in 2016, five times more than in 1999. The reason? Since several of these powerful painkillers became available in pill form several decades ago, doctors have been prescribing more than patients need. "It is estimated that a large part of leftover opioids are diverted to the street, either deliberately or through theft," says Dr. Edgar Ross, senior clinician at the Pain Management Center at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The misuse of opioids is a risk many states are no longer willing to take. The rules limit the amounts that medical professionals can prescribe for temporary (acute) pain from surgery, injury, or illness.

Exercise and movement may be the best medicine for back pain.

 
You might be considering surgery or other intervention to treat your back pain. But less may actually be more for this common problem, and in many instances the best medicine is good old-fashioned movement and exercise.

The enigma of back pain

Back pain is one of the most common medical problems in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. It's also a little strange as far as ailments go.