• Clin Drug Investig · Feb 2012

    Review

    Barriers to pain management : focus on opioid therapy.

    • Stefano Maria Zuccaro, Renato Vellucci, Piercarlo Sarzi-Puttini, Paolo Cherubino, Roberto Labianca, and Diego Fornasari.
    • Department of Geriatrics, Ospedale Israelitico, Rome, Italy. stefano.zuccaro@tiscali.it
    • Clin Drug Investig. 2012 Feb 1;32 Suppl 1:11-9.

    AbstractDespite the availability of effective pain treatments, there are numerous barriers to effective management resulting in a large proportion of patients not achieving optimal pain control. Chronic pain is inadequately treated because of a combination of cultural, societal, educational, political and religious constraints. The consequences of inadequately treated pain are physiological and psychological effects on the patient, as well as socioeconomic implications. Unreasonable failure to treat pain is viewed as unethical and an infringement of basic human rights. The numerous barriers to the clinical management of pain vary depending on whether they are viewed from the standpoint of the patient, the physician, or the institution. Identification and acknowledgement of the barriers involved are the first steps to overcoming them. Successful initiatives to overcome patient, physician and institutional barriers need to be multifaceted in their approach. Multidisciplinary initiatives to improve pain management include dissemination of community-based information, education and awareness programmes to attempt to change attitudes towards pain treatment. A better awareness and insight into the problems caused by unrelieved pain and greater knowledge about the efficacy and tolerability of available pain management options should enable physicians to seek out and adhere to treatment guidelines, and participate in interventional and educational programmes designed to improve pain management, and for institutions to implement the initiatives required. Although much work is underway to identify and resolve the issues in pain management, many patients still receive inadequate treatment. Continued effort is required to overcome the known barriers to effective pain management.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…