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www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/3/22/opioid-painkillers-top-selling-drug-in-10-states If you live in Oklahoma, the drug you’re most likely to be prescribed is the opioid painkiller Vicodin — or some other combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen. In Texas, the #1 drug is Synthroid (levothyroxine) – which is used to treat thyroid deficiencies. In California, its Lipitor (atorvastatin) – a statin used to treat […]
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Opioid overdoses spike 30 percent, hospitals report https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-overdoses-increase-across-us/ A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brings more bad news for the nation’s continued fight against the opioid epidemic. Data from hospital emergency departments show a big increase in drug overdoses across the country. In a press briefing on Tuesday, CDC Acting Director […]
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Using Marijuana 2 Times a Month Cost This Doctor His License https://www.doximity.com/doc_news/v2/entries/11612578 If a physician has a substance use or mental health problem, it is in everyone’s interest — the physicians themselves, their patients and their families — for them to get treatment. And if they go for treatment, they deserve to be treated fairly, […]
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www.chronicdiseasecoalition.com/news-three-states-harmful-health-insurance-practices-making-headlines/ Patients, advocates and elected officials often use the media to promote legislation and bring awareness to chronic disease. During the month of March, we read articles, letters to the editor and op-eds that addressed how to protect patients’ rights. We’ve outlined three of our favorites below: 1. For years, epilepsy patient Erin Guard could […]
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www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/3/29/cdc-blames-fentanyl-for-spike-in-overdose-deaths March 29, 2018 By Pat Anson, Editor The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new report today estimating that 63,632 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2016 – a 21.5% increase over the 2015 total. The sharp rise in drug deaths is blamed largely on illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic […]
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https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death#1 For more than a decade, heart disease and cancer have claimed the first and second spots respectively as the leading causes of deaths in America. Together, the two causes are responsible for 46 percent of deaths in the United States. Combined with the third most common cause of death, chronic lower respiratory diseases, the […]
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www.khn.org/news/difficult-to-gauge-rate-of-suicide-among-deaths-from-opioid-overdoses/ Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend’s bathroom looking down at the sink. “I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back,” Ohlman recalled. She doesn’t remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how […]
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CMS proposes to force patients off effective opioid doses without their physician’s approval Nondiscrimination https://www.cms.gov/about-cms/agency-information/aboutwebsite/cmsnondiscriminationnotice.html Nondiscrimination Notice CMS doesn’t exclude, deny benefits to, or otherwise discriminate against any person on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, sex, or age in admission to, participation in, or receipt of the services and benefits under any of […]
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New Attitudes Toward Pain Amid the Opioid Crisis https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/893926 Backpedaling on Opioid Use To correct what they believe was an overly zealous approach to pain control that put patients at risk for opioid addiction, some physicians are now telling their patients to expect to have some pain. A recent article on Medscape explains that “Doctors […]
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Palliative care is a right of all people in pain www.kevinmd.com/blog/2018/03/palliative-care-right-people-pain.html In 2017, The Lancet published a report on the international lack of palliative care. It is a tale of woe documenting the sorry state of unrelieved global suffering. Everywhere “people live and die with little or no palliative care or pain relief.” It describes […]
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