Postgraduate medicine
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Postgraduate medicine · Jan 2020
ReviewThe prescription opioid conundrum: 21st century solutions to a millennia-long problem.
Health-care professionals are faced with a daunting task: balancing appropriate care for chronic pain with their responsibility to keep patients and others safe from treatment-related harm. Whereas opioids have historically been considered an effective tool in the analgesic armamentarium, the rise of opioid abuse has caused the pendulum to swing away from prescribing opioids to an emphasis on safety. This paradigm shift risks neglecting the very real consequences of untreated/undertreated pain. ⋯ Enhancing the relative safety and minimizing the risk for abuse/misuse may be achieved through proactive prescription practices that include careful patient selection, risk assessment, individualized and multimodal treatment plans with established goals, initiating opioid treatment cautiously with an exit plan in place, ongoing assessments of response to therapy, and routine patient monitoring. Additionally, prescribing opioids with a lower potential for abuse or misuse (e.g. abuse-deterrent formulations) may provide a benefit. Using a pragmatic approach to prescribing practices, we postulate that the balance between benefit and risk can be favorable for opioid therapy in select patients, even for long-term treatment of chronic pain.
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Postgraduate medicine · Jan 2020
Comparative StudyComparison of multimodal, sliding scale acute pain protocols with traditional prescribing in non-surgical patients.
Objective: Our institution implemented six multimodal, sliding scale protocols for managing pain in non-surgical inpatients. The purpose of this study was to compare the use of these acute pain protocols with traditional prescribing in regard to pain management efficacy and safety measures. Methods: This retrospective cohort study evaluated hospital in-patients who were prescribed one of the protocols during the first 6 months following implementation, admitted to the hospitalist service, and had received at least two doses of PRN analgesic medication within a 24-hour period. ⋯ Patients in the protocol group used an average of 35.81 MEDs per day compared to 65.77 MEDs in controls (p = 0.019). Patients in the protocol group used significantly fewer PRN analgesic doses (12.70 vs. 24.02, p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Analysis of the implementation of acute pain management protocols indicates that using standardized pain management protocols of opioids, non-opioids, and medications to prevent opioid-related adverse events is more effective than traditional analgesic prescribing for our patient population.
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Postgraduate medicine · Jan 2020
The physical examination: a survey of patient preferences and expectations during primary care visits.
Background: Little is known about patient preference regarding the physical exam in non-urgent primary care settings. Objective: To determine the differences between a patient's expectations of the physical exam and the actual components of the physical examination performed during a non-urgent visit. Design: A total of 452 surveys administered in the waiting room of a VA primary care clinic in West Haven, CT. ⋯ Conclusion: Patient perception of their primary care provider is strongly associated with the number of maneuvers recalled during an annual physical. Furthermore, the number of maneuvers expected by a patient is influenced by race, with nonwhite patients desiring more. This suggests the need for further research on the role of race in the expectations of healthcare providers.
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Meralgia Paresthetica (MP) is one of the most common mononeuropathies of the lower limb. MP usually resolves on its own, even without treatment. However, many physicians are not aware of this diagnosis and may confuse patients with another nerve disease such as radiculopathies. ⋯ Many treatments for MP are available, but they are supported only by moderate to low-quality evidence. Treatments range from conservative to interventions using nerve blocks and surgery. Without a clear superiority of any treatment, the author concludes that treatment should be done in a stepwise fashion, from the noninvasive to the more invasive treatment if symptoms persist.