I have been wondering this for a long time now. When I was looking for a pain mangement Dr, 95% of them didn't want to prescribe painkillers, they just wanted to put me on a patch, BuTrans, which contains buprenorphine, the strengths of the patches are 5mcg, 10mcg, and 20mcg.
http://www.butrans.com/.
At that time My total intake of Oxycodone was about 110mg. Now I was thinking wouldn't wearing this patch put me into Withdrawals? Only one DR wanted to add Oxycodone along with the patch for BT pain, just 5mg though, 20mg daily.
Im not sure if Im thinking it out correctly. I know my current PM Dr offers the patch since I see brochures for it, but never once was it brought up to me. Of course this PM Dr switched things up, he added Opana 60mgs Daily, along with Roxicodone, 120mgs daily.
It seems like the patch is for people with little tolerance, but I feel most of those Dr's just didn't get it, which is why I refused it all those time and kept looking for another Dr. Maybe its because I'm to young to be in pain, they didn't want to give me pills, but pain doesn't pick an age nor did the auto-immune disease I have.