One of the biggest epidemics facing America today is pain.
One third of Americans are afflicted with either acute or chronic pain according to the Institute of Medicine study from last year.
But this is not a new phenomenon.
Back in the mid-1990s there was a problem with how doctors viewed narcotic medications.
Most doctors only wanted to prescribe narcotic medications for patients who had either a terminal illness or cancer.
There was a very large fear over drug addiction from narcotics so the result of that was that pain was significantly undertreated.
In the mid-1990s the American Pain Society started looking at setting up guidelines for narcotic use.
A few years later the VA Hospital started to look up pain more closely.
They started the campaign "pain is the 5th vital sign".
The original for vital signs are body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate.
These are all objective findings that involve using a thermometer, a blood pressure monitor, and watch.
The stethoscope may be necessary as well.
So the difference with pain being a vital sign is that it is a subjective quality while the others are quantitative.
Plenty of people reject pain being a vital sign for this particular reason.
However, in 1999 the Veterans Administration made pain their policy for being the 5th vital sign.
Right around that time, the visual analogue scale became prominent.
This is the scale where doctors ask you how bad your pain is on a scale from 1 to 10.
Or in a pediatric setting, the child looks at drawings where you see a sad face or a happy face and child picks the one that describes how much pain her or she is in.
Unfortunately, subsequent studies accomplished by the VA have looked at the pain management guidelines that were set up back in the mid-to-late 1990s and have shown they really haven't helped very much.
OxyContin was approved back in 1995 by the FDA.
I wonder if they regret that decision because in the 5 years from 1997 to 2002 prescriptions increased from 800,000 to well over 6 million.
This represents almost an eightfold increase in 5 years.
It has continued to rise dramatically over the last 10 years.
A lot of pain management doctors get a bad reputation based off of poor actions by a few pain clinics.
Most pain management doctors truly have a patient's best interest at heart and want to alleviate pain based on the Hippocratic oath.
It is just a few bad apples that have tainted the pain management profession.
Some research studies have shown that pain is undertreated currently, but if you look back at the mid-1990s it was significantly undertreated because of the fear of addiction.
The way of thinking about pain has changed significantly so that there are physicians who are not as scared to prescribe narcotics for pain management.
Now what is happening is that it is being shown that comprehensive pain management clinics are achieving better outcomes with their patients than those who solely prescribed narcotic medication.
One third of Americans are afflicted with either acute or chronic pain according to the Institute of Medicine study from last year.
But this is not a new phenomenon.
Back in the mid-1990s there was a problem with how doctors viewed narcotic medications.
Most doctors only wanted to prescribe narcotic medications for patients who had either a terminal illness or cancer.
There was a very large fear over drug addiction from narcotics so the result of that was that pain was significantly undertreated.
In the mid-1990s the American Pain Society started looking at setting up guidelines for narcotic use.
A few years later the VA Hospital started to look up pain more closely.
They started the campaign "pain is the 5th vital sign".
The original for vital signs are body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate.
These are all objective findings that involve using a thermometer, a blood pressure monitor, and watch.
The stethoscope may be necessary as well.
So the difference with pain being a vital sign is that it is a subjective quality while the others are quantitative.
Plenty of people reject pain being a vital sign for this particular reason.
However, in 1999 the Veterans Administration made pain their policy for being the 5th vital sign.
Right around that time, the visual analogue scale became prominent.
This is the scale where doctors ask you how bad your pain is on a scale from 1 to 10.
Or in a pediatric setting, the child looks at drawings where you see a sad face or a happy face and child picks the one that describes how much pain her or she is in.
Unfortunately, subsequent studies accomplished by the VA have looked at the pain management guidelines that were set up back in the mid-to-late 1990s and have shown they really haven't helped very much.
OxyContin was approved back in 1995 by the FDA.
I wonder if they regret that decision because in the 5 years from 1997 to 2002 prescriptions increased from 800,000 to well over 6 million.
This represents almost an eightfold increase in 5 years.
It has continued to rise dramatically over the last 10 years.
A lot of pain management doctors get a bad reputation based off of poor actions by a few pain clinics.
Most pain management doctors truly have a patient's best interest at heart and want to alleviate pain based on the Hippocratic oath.
It is just a few bad apples that have tainted the pain management profession.
Some research studies have shown that pain is undertreated currently, but if you look back at the mid-1990s it was significantly undertreated because of the fear of addiction.
The way of thinking about pain has changed significantly so that there are physicians who are not as scared to prescribe narcotics for pain management.
Now what is happening is that it is being shown that comprehensive pain management clinics are achieving better outcomes with their patients than those who solely prescribed narcotic medication.
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