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doc • Spring 2016
Kentucky
management. The conversation was often
shifted to monitoring for egregious addiction or lesser adverse effects rather than
the lacking efficacy or problems of physical dependency and rebound pain. Once
chronically exposed, many patients cannot
return to abstinence, even upon resolution
of the original complaint. Thus the decision to initiate opiates and the reasonable
doses prescribed are enormous life-altering
choices, often sidelined by the imperative to treat regardless of a condition’s
long-term response to opiates. Nationally,
lawsuits have been filed against pharmaceuticals as a result of misleading claims but as
clinicians we must learn from our own mistakes to vet the knowledge we gain from
our pharmaceutical counterparts.
Medical Providers
Pill mills have long been a scapegoat
for the opiate epidemic. While undoubtedly unscrupulous businessmen [